The Need for Risk Stratification Tools in the Pediatric Emergency Department.

Abstract

* Abbreviations: ED — : emergency department LqSOFA — : Liverpool quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment In this issue of Pediatrics, Romaine et al1 describe the derivation and validation of a novel risk stratification score, the Liverpool quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (LqSOFA) score, in predicting critical care admission for febrile children in a single emergency department (ED) in the United Kingdom. The authors aimed to address the long-standing challenge of identifying potentially critically ill children from the sea of well children with fever who present for pediatric emergency care: identifying the proverbial “needle in a haystack.” Their team proposed the LqSOFA as a rapid, easily implemented score that can be applied during an ED visit to facilitate recognition of ill children, with a particular interest in identifying children with sepsis. The elements of the LqSOFA were determined by consensus, and the score gives a point each for poor perfusion, altered mental status (measured by the Awake, Verbal, Pain, Unresponsive scale), and heart rate and respiratory … Address correspondence to Fran Balamuth, MD, PhD, Division of Emergency Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 3501 Civic Center Blvd, Colket Translational Research Building 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: balamuthf{at}email.chop.edu