Derivation and Internal Validation of a Novel Risk Assessment Tool to Identify Infants and Young Children at Risk for Post-Discharge Mortality in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Monrovia, Liberia.

OBJECTIVE

To derive and validate internally a novel risk assessment tool to identify young children at risk for all-cause mortality ≤60 days of discharge from hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa.

STUDY DESIGN

We performed a prospective observational cohort study of children aged 1-59 months discharged from Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia (2019-2022). Caregivers received telephone calls up to 60 days after discharge to ascertain participant vital status. We collected socioeconomic, demographic, clinical, and anthropometric data during hospitalization. Candidate variables with P < .20 in bivariate analyses were included in a multivariable logistic regression model with best subset selection to identify risk factors for the outcome. We internally validated our tool using bootstrapping with 500 repetitions.

RESULTS

There were 1933 young children enrolled in the study. The median (IQR) age was 11 (4, 23) months and 58.7% were males. In total, 67 (3.5%) died during follow-up. Ten variables contributed to our tool (total possible score 82). Cancer (aOR 10.6, 95% CI 2.58, 34.6), pedal edema (aOR 6.94, 95% CI 1.69, 22.6), and leaving against medical advice (aOR 6.46, 95% CI 2.46, 15.3) were most predictive of post-discharge mortality. Our risk assessment tool demonstrated good discriminatory value (optimism corrected area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 0.77), high precision, and sufficient calibration.

CONCLUSIONS

After validation, this tool may be used to identify young children at risk for post-discharge mortality to direct resources for follow-up of high-risk children.