Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology (SNAP) or Vermont Oxford Risk-Adjustment Model for Very Low Birth Weight Infants?

Abstract

To the Editor .— We read with great interest the article by Zupancic et al,1 which compared the revised Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology (SNAP-II) and revised Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology Perinatal Extension (SNAPPE-II) scores with the Vermont Oxford Network risk-adjustment algorithm (VON-RA) in a large cohort of term and preterm infants from North America. In very low birth weight (VLBW) infants, both scores performed equally well, as judged by their receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis results, the area being 0.86 for the SNAPPE-II and 0.85 for the VON-RA. Given that treatment policies of small preterm infants are different in different countries, it is of interest to know how these scores perform in other settings. We previously published an article2 in which we obtained, in VLBW infants, an …