• Ian Levenfus, Enrico Ullmann, Edouard Battegay, and Macé M Schuurmans.
• University Hospital Zurich, Division of Internal Medicine, Zurich, Switzerland; University of Zurich, Faculty of Medicine, Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: info@levenfus.com.
• Braz J Infect Dis. 2020 Sep 1; 24 (5): 458-461.

AbstractClinical prediction scores support the assessment of patients in the emergency setting to determine the need for further diagnostic and therapeutic steps. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, physicians in emergency rooms (ER) of many hospitals have a considerably higher patient load and need to decide within a short time frame whom to hospitalize. Based on our clinical experiences in dealing with COVID-19 patients at the University Hospital in Zurich, we created a triage score with the acronym "AIFELL" consisting of clinical, radiological and laboratory findings. The score was then evaluated in a retrospective analysis of 122 consecutive patients with suspected COVID-19 from March until mid-April 2020. Descriptive statistics, Student's t-test, ANOVA and Scheffe's post-hoc analysis confirmed the diagnostic power of the score. The results suggest that the AIFELL score has potential as a triage tool in the ER setting intended to select probable COVID-19 cases for hospitalization in spontaneously presenting or referred patients with acute respiratory symptoms.Copyright © 2020 Sociedade Brasileira de Infectologia. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

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