Evaluation of pediatric intensive care scoring systems.

There is no report analysing pediatric severity scoring systems in British Intensive Therapy Units (ICUs). Two previously reported pediatric severity scoring systems, the Admission Physiologic Stability Index (APSI) and the Organ System Failure (OSF) score were evaluated for 151 patients. The APSI was higher for children who died than for those who lived (p less than 0.001). This difference reflected the sharp distinction between the APSI for children who left intensive care within 24 h and those remaining in ICU longer than 24 h (p less than 0.001). For children remaining in ICU longer than 24 h, there was a large overlap of APSI scores, and the APSI did not discriminate between children in the overlap region who lived and those who died (p = 0.054). There was underscoring of neurological patients; the APSI did not differentiate neurological patients whole lived and those who died (p greater than 0.10). The OSF also underscored neurological patients. Increasing number of organ systems failed was associated with increasing mortality. In contrast to previous reports, however, the mortality rate was unaffected by whether the total number of systems failed simultaneously or non-simultaneously. There is still a need for a comprehensive yet simple pediatric scoring system for comparing the efficacy and outcome of pediatric intensive care in different ICUs in different countries.