Early recognition of critically ill patients

Abstract

Background: Critically ill patients are the patients with life-threatening multiorgan disorders. In most cases the occurrence of life-threatening situation preceding the deterioration of basic vital parameters, which are often overlooked in outhospital and hospital conditions. For these reasons, the systematic monitoring of vital parameters is of great significance, and in that aim, the introduction in to the daily work, primarily in the hospital setting, the scoring system for the early identification of critically ill patients. There are several of these scoring systems, some of which are commonly used early warning scoring systems, which are measuring the vital parameters such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory frequency, temperature, oxygen saturation of peripheral blood and/or urine output, mental status changes. Numerous studies demonstrated the importance of the implementation of these systems in everyday clinical practice for the timely recognition of critically ill patients in the hospital setting in order to reduce mortality. According to some studies, these scoring systems have prognostic significance.