The comparative ability of commonly used disease severity scores to predict death or a requirement for ICU care in patients hospitalised with possible sepsis in Yangon, Myanmar.

OBJECTIVES

To determine the comparative prognostic utility of commonly used disease prediction scores in adults with presumed community-acquired sepsis in a resource-limited tropical setting.

METHODS

This prospective, observational study was performed on the medical ward of a tertiary-referral hospital in Yangon, Myanmar. The ability of the National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2), quick NEWS (qNEWS), quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) score, Universal Vital Assessment (UVA) and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores to predict a complicated inpatient course (death or requirement for intensive care unit (ICU) support) in patients with two or more systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria was determined.

RESULTS

Among the 509 patients, 30 (6%) were HIV-seropositive. The most commonly confirmed diagnoses were tuberculosis (30/509, 5.9%) and measles (26/509, 5.1%). Overall, 75/509 (14.7%) died or required ICU support. All the scores except the qSOFA score, which was inferior, had a similar ability to predict a complicated inpatient course.

CONCLUSIONS

In this resource-limited tropical setting, disease severity scores calculated at presentation using only vital signs-such as the NEWS2 score-identified high-risk sepsis patient as well as the SOFA score, which is calculated at 24 h and which also requires laboratory data. Use of these simple clinical scores can be used to facilitate recognition of the high-risk patient and to optimise the use of finite resources.