The Prognostics Accuracy of Early Warning Score Screening in Patients with COVID-19: A Literature Review

Abstract

The accuracy of an early warning score (EWS) in early identification of a patient’s condition can help healthcare workers to promptly and appropriately identify therapy for the patient; it is also used to determine which patients will go to the emergency room, and to monitor the patient’s condition while in the hospital. There are no comprehensive syntheses of the current prognostics accuracy of EWS screening in patients with COVID-19. This review aimed to identify published articles that described EWS accuracy and parameters used in EWS screening. A systematic search of four databases (Science Direct, Pubmed, Google Scholar, and Proquest) was conducted to identify articles describing prognostics accuracy of EWS screening in patients with COVID-19. The EWS, its parameter and its components were extracted and narratively synthesized to identify patterns and themes across the types of EWS. A total of 10 articles describing EWS systems were identified. It was found that the National Early Warning Score (NEWS), National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2), Standardized Early Warning Score (SEWS), and Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) had accurate results ranging from 81-92% sensitivity, specificity of 78-84%, and accuracy of 90-96%. Finally, those EWS systems were shown to perform remarkably well in recognizing a patient’s clinical status at time of admission to the hospital and in determining the appropriate treatment.
 Keywords: accuracy, early warning score, COVID-19