Development and Validation of the Chronic Subdural HematOma Referral oUtcome Prediction Using Statistics (CHORUS) Score: A Retrospective Study at a National Tertiary Center

Abstract

Chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH) is a common neurosurgical condition with an increasing rate of patient referrals. CSDH referral decision-making is a subjective clinical process, and our aim was to develop a simple scoring system capable of acting as a decision support tool aiding referral triage. A single tertiary center retrospective case series analysis of all CSDH patient referrals from 2015 to 2020 was conducted. Ten independent variables used in the referral process were analyzed to predict the binary outcome of either accepting or rejecting the CSDH referral. Following feature selection analysis, a multivariable scoring system was developed and evaluated. 1500 patient referrals were included. Stepwise multivariable logistic and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression identified age <85years, the presence of headaches, dementia, motor weakness, radiological midline shift, a reasonable premorbid quality of life, and a large sized hematoma to be statistically significant predictors of CSDH referral acceptance (P<0.04). These variables derived a scoring system ranging from -9 to 6 with an optimal cut-off for referral acceptance at any score >1 (P<0.0001). This scoring system demonstrated optimal calibration (brier score loss=0.0552), with a score >1 predicting referral acceptance with an area under the curve of 0.899 (0.876-0.922), a sensitivity of 83.838% (76.587-91.089), and a specificity of 96.000% (94.080-97.920). Certain patient specific clinical and radiological characteristics can predict the acceptance or rejection of a CSDH referral. Considering the precision of this scoring system, it has the potential for effectively triaging CSDH referrals.