• Martin Spångfors, Mats Molt, and Karin Samuelson.
• Lund University, Lund, Sweden and Hospital of Kristianstad, Kristianstad, Sweden martin.spangfors@skane.se.
• Clin Med (Lond). 2020 Jan 1; 20 (1): 556055-60.

AbstractWe aimed to describe and evaluate the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) in the 24 hours preceding an in-hospital cardiac arrest among general somatic ward patients.The 24 hours preceding the in-hospital cardiac arrest were divided into four timespans and analysed by a medical record review of 127:254 matched case-control patients. The median NEWS ranged from 3 (2-6) to 6 (3-9) points for cases vs 1 (0-3) to 1 (0-3) point for controls. The proportion of cases ranged from 23-45% at high risk vs 3-6% for controls. The NEWS high-risk category was associated with an increase of 3.17 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.66-6.04) to 4.43 (95% CI 2.56-7.67) in odds of in-hospital cardiac arrest compared to the low-risk category.NEWS, with its intuitive and for healthcare staff easy to interpret risk classification, is suitable for discriminating deteriorating patients with major deviating vital signs scoring high risk on NEWS.© Royal College of Physicians 2020. All rights reserved.

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