The Performances of Multiple Scoring Systems to Predict Patients Required Immediate Life-Saving Intervention in Emergency Department

Abstract

Background: Crowding in emergency room is the major problem especially in the resuscitation room. Many patients require immediate life-saving interventions (LSI). Whereas, many different scoring systems such as national early warning score (NEWS), worthing physiological scoring system (WPS), modified early warning score (MEWS), and rapid emergency medicine score (REMS) have been developed for assessing patients at risk.
 Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of 4 scoring systems performance in predicting LSI use in emergency room and reenter to the resuscitation room within 48 hours.
 Methods: Data were collected by a retrospective cross-sectional study of patients treated in the resuscitation room for 2 months period, at Ramathibodi Hospital. The number of patients who received LSI and reentry to resuscitation room were studied, compared by selected scoring systems.
 Results: Total 839 patients entered resuscitation room, while 331 (39.45%) patients received LSI. The first three groups at risk were metabolic diseases, gastrointestinal systems, and infections, respectively. The most effective scoring system in predicting patients required LSI was MEWS, the discrimination of this system was significantly better than NEWS (AUC, 0.69 vs 0.65; 95% CI, 0.65 - 0.72; P = .01). Eighty-six patients (13.89%) from 619 patients reentered to the resuscitation room. Moreover, NEWS was the most effective in predicting patients who had a risk of reenter (AUC, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.66 - 0.78; P < .001).
 Conclusions: MEWS is the most effective scoring system for patient assessment of LSI utilization. However, NEWS is the one suitable for predicting reenter tendency.