Hiemstra, Bart; Eck, Ruben J.; Wiersema, Renske; Kaufmann, Thomas; Koster, Geert; Scheeren, Thomas W.L.; Snieder, Harold; Perner, Anders; Pettilä, Ville; Wetterslev, Jørn; Keus, Frederik; van der Horst, Iwan C.C.; SICS Study Group

Objectives: Caregivers use clinical examination to timely recognize deterioration of a patient, yet data on the prognostic value of clinical examination are inconsistent. In the Simple Intensive Care Studies-I, we evaluated the association of clinical examination findings with 90-day mortality in critically ill patients. Design: Prospective single-center cohort study. Setting: ICU of a single tertiary care level hospital between March 27, 2015, and July 22, 2017. Patients: All consecutive adults acutely admitted to the ICU and expected to stay for at least 24 hours. Interventions: A protocolized clinical examination of 19 clinical signs conducted within 24 hours of admission. Measurements: Independent predictors of 90-day mortality were identified using multivariable logistic regression analyses. Model performance was compared with established prognostic risk scores using area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC). Robustness of our findings was tested by internal bootstrap validation and adjustment of the threshold for statistical significance. Main Results: A total of 1,075 patients were included, of whom 298 patients (28%) had died at 90-day follow-up. Multivariable analyses adjusted for age and norepinephrine infusion rate demonstrated that the combination of higher respiratory rate, higher systolic blood pressure, lower central temperature, altered consciousness, and decreased urine output was independently associated with 90-day mortality (AUC = 0.74; 95% CI, 0.71–0.78). Clinical examination had a similar discriminative value as compared with the Simplified Acute Physiology Score-II (SAPS-II) (AUC = 0.76; 95% CI, 0.73–0.79; p = 0.29) and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation-IV (APACHE-IV) (AUC = 0.77; 95% CI, 0.74–0.80; p = 0.16) and was significantly better than the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) (AUC = 0.67; 95% CI, 0.64–0.71; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Clinical examination has reasonable discriminative value for assessing 90-day mortality in acutely admitted ICU patients. In our study population, a single, protocolized clinical examination had similar prognostic abilities compared with the SAPS-II and APACHE-IV and outperformed the SOFA score. New affiliation for Dr. Eck: Department of Internal Medicine, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. Drs. Hiemstra, van der Horst, and Keus drafted the manuscript and conducted the analyses. Drs. van der Horst and Keus created the idea of the study. Drs. Eck and Koster developed the protocol and implemented the study. Mr. Wiersema and Dr. Kaufmann contributed substantially to the data collection. Drs. Wetterslev and Snieder contributed to the statistical analyses and design of the detailed statistical analyses plan. Professors Scheeren, Perner, and Pettilä critically reviewed the article. All authors critically reviewed the article and agreed with the final version and findings. Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal’s website (http://journals.lww.com/ccmjournal). Prof dr. Scheeren received research funding and honoraria from Edwards Lifesciences and Masimo Inc. (Irvine, CA) for consulting and lecturing and from Pulsion Medical Systems SE for lecturing in the past. The remaining authors have disclosed that they do not have any potential conflicts of interest. Ethics approval: Medisch Ethische Toetsingscommissie, University Medical Center Groningen; METc M15.168207. ORCID IDs: Dr. Hiemstra: 0000-0001-6547-2138; Dr. Eck: 0000-0001-7440-2465; Mr. Wiersema: 0000-0003-2413-2852; Dr. Kaufmann: 0000-0003-0589-8879; Dr. Koster: 0000-0002-8927-3077; Dr. Scheeren: 0000-0002-9184-4190; Dr. Snieder; 0000-0003-1949-2298; Dr. Perner: 0000-0002-4668-0123; Dr. Wetterslev: 0000-0001-7778-1771; Dr. Keus: 0000-0003-1516-1475; Dr. van der Horst: 0000-0003-3891-8522. For information regarding this article, E-mail: b.hiemstra01@umcg.nl This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. Copyright © by 2019 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Kan F, Tan C, von Bahr Greenwood T, et al.

AbstractBackgroundGlobally approximately 500,000 people with severe dengue (SD) require hospitalization yearly; about 12,500 (2.5%) die. Secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (sHLH) is a potentially fatal hyperinflammatory condition for which HLH-directed therapy (as etoposide and dexamethasone) can be life-saving. Prompted by the high mortality in SD and the increasing awareness that patients with SD may develop sHLH, our objectives were to i) determine the frequency of dengue-HLH in SD, ii) describe clinical features of dengue-HLH, iii) assess mortality rate in SD and dengue-HLH, and iv). identify mortality-associated risk factors in SD.MethodsA 5-year retrospective single-center study on all adult patients with SD admitted to a tertiary ICU in Malaysia.ResultsThirty-nine/180 (22%) patients with SD died. Twenty-one/180 (12%) had HLH defined as HLH-probability ≥70% according to HScore; nine (43%) died. Similarly, 12/31 (39%) fulfilling ≥4 and 7/9 (78%) fulfilling ≥5 HLH-2004 diagnostic criteria died. Peak values of AST, ALT, LDH, and creatinine correlated to fatality (OR=2.9, 3.4, 5.8, and 31.9; all p

Nobuhiro Asai, Hiroki Watanabe, Arufumi Shiota, Hideo Kato, Daisuke Sakanashi, Mao Hagihara, Yusuke Koizumi, Yuka Yamagishi, Hiroyuki Suematsu, Hiroshige Mikamo

Abstract Background This study aimed to determine the prevalence of infectious diseases and risk factors for one-year mortality in elderly emergency department (ED) patients. Methods A retrospective cohort study of patients aged 65 and over who visited the ED of one urban teaching hospital in Bangkok, Thailand and who were diagnosed with infectious diseases between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2016. Results There were 463 elderly patients who visited ED with infectious diseases, accounting for 14.5% (463/3,196) of all elderly patients’ visits. The most common diseases diagnosed by emergency physicians (EPs) were pneumonia [151 (32.6%) patients] followed by pyelonephritis [107 (23.1%) patients] and intestinal infection [53 (11.4%) patients]. Moreover, 286 (61.8%) patients were admitted during the study period. The in-hospital mortality rate was 22.7%. 181 (39.1%) patients died within 1 year. Our multivariate analysis showed that age 85 years and older [odds ratio (OR) = 1.89; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.36–2.63], Charlson Co-morbidity Index score ≥ 5 (OR = 3.51; 95% CI2.14–5.77), lactate ≥4 mmol/l (OR = 2.66;95% CI 1.32–5.38), quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) score ≥ 2 (OR = 5.46; 95% CI 2.94–10.12), and platelet count

Richard-Greenblatt M, Boillat-Blanco N, Zhong K, et al.

AbstractBackgroundThe inability to identify individuals with acute fever at risk of death is a barrier to effective triage and management of severe infections, especially in low-resource settings. Since endothelial and immune activation contribute to the pathogenesis of various distinct life-threatening infections, we hypothesized that measuring mediators of these pathways at clinical presentation would identify febrile adults at risk of death.MethodsPlasma concentrations of markers of endothelial (Angpt-2, sFlt-1, sVCAM-1, sICAM-1) and immune (sTREM-1, IL-6, IL-8, CHI3L1, sTNFR1, PCT, CRP) activation pathways were determined in consecutive adults with acute fever (>38°C) at presentation to outpatient clinics in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We evaluated the accuracy of these mediators in predicting all-cause mortality, and examined whether markers could improve the prognostic accuracy of clinical scoring systems, including the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS).ResultsOf 507 febrile adults, 32 died (6.3%) within 28 days of presentation. sTREM-1 was the best prognostic marker for 28-day mortality (area under the receiver operating characteristic [AUROC] 0.87, 95% CI 0.81-0.92) and was significantly better than CRP (P

Challener DW, Prokop LJ, Abu-Saleh O.

This Viewpoint charts the rise in publications describing risk prediction tools, such as the FRAX, CHADS2, and SOFA scores, and discusses the implications of using algorithms for clinical decisions in the absence of evidence about the effects of the tools on patient care and outcomes.

Satoshi Koyama, Yutaka Yamaguchi, Koichiro Gibo, Izumi Nakayama, Shinichiro Ueda

by Satoshi Koyama, Yutaka Yamaguchi, Koichiro Gibo, Izumi Nakayama, Shinichiro Ueda Background The quick sequential organ failure assessment (qSOFA) score has recently been introduced to the emergency department (ED) and wards, and it predicted a higher number of deaths among patients with sepsis compared with baseline risk. However, studies about the application of the qSOFA score are limited in prehospital settings. Thus, this study aimed to assess the performance of prehospital qSOFA score in predicting the risk of mortality among patients with infection. Methods This single center, retrospective cohort study was conducted in a Japanese tertiary care teaching hospital between April 2016 and March 2017. We enrolled all consecutive adult patients transported to the hospital by ambulance and admitted to the ED due to a suspected infection. We calculated the prehospital qSOFA score using the first vital sign obtained at the scene by emergency medical service (EMS) providers. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the association between prehospital qSOFA positivity and in-hospital mortality. Results Among the 925 patients admitted to the ED due to a suspected infection, 51.1% (473/925) were prehospital qSOFA-positive and 48.9% (452/925) were prehospital qSOFA-negative. The in-hospital mortality rates were 14.0% (66/473) in prehospital qSOFA-positive patients and 6.0% (27/452) in prehospital qSOFA-negative patients. The Cox proportional hazard regression model revealed a strong association between prehospital qSOFA score and in-hospital mortality (adjusted hazard ratio: 2.41, 95% confidence interval: 1.51–3.98; p…