Quick risk assessment profile (qRAP) is a prediction model for post-traumatic venous thromboembolism

Abstract

ObjectiveThe Risk Assessment Profile (RAP) score is used as a tool of risk prediction in post-traumatic venous thromboembolism (VTE), but this scoring system is complicated to use in clinical settings due to its many variables. The objective of this study was to validate the utility of the RAP model and to develop a simpler risk prediction model for post-traumatic VTE. MethodsWe conducted an observational study at two emergency and critical care centres in Japan between 2013 and 2016. Consecutive adult trauma patients who survived for 24 h or more after admission to the hospital were enroled. One prediction model (quick RAP model) was created with 6 variables based on clinical utility, experience, and thrombogenic mechanism from 17 variables in the conventional RAP model. We calculated diagnostic performance with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) by exact method. ResultsWe identified and analysed 859 patients. Twenty-six patients (3.0%) had VTE (17 with deep venous thrombosis alone, 2 with pulmonary embolism alone, and 7 with both). In the external validation, the RAP model had a sensitivity of 100% (95% CI, 86.8–100%) and specificity of 37.9% (95% CI, 34.6–41.3%). In contrast, the qRAP model had a sensitivity of 96.2% (95% CI, 80.4–99.9%) and specificity of 56.2% (95% CI, 52.7–59.6%). In the internal validation, receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis showed that the two models had similar area under the curve values that were not significantly different (0.832 and 0.800, respectively; RAP vs qRAP, p = 0.477). ConclusionsWe developed a practical, modified predictive model for VTE, the qRAP model, which appeared only slightly less accurate than the conventional RAP model and had the advantage of being simpler to use to predict VTE. In our dataset, the conventional RAP model was also evaluated as useful for the prediction of post-traumatic VTE.