• Critical care medicine · Nov 1998

    Multicenter Study

    Use of the SOFA score to assess the incidence of organ dysfunction/failure in intensive care units: results of a multicenter, prospective study. Working group on "sepsis-related problems" of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

    • J L Vincent, A de Mendonça, F Cantraine, R Moreno, J Takala, P M Suter, C L Sprung, F Colardyn, and S Blecher.
    • Department of Intensive Care, Erasme University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium. jlvincen@ulb.ac.be
    • Crit. Care Med. 1998 Nov 1;26(11):1793-800.

    ObjectiveTo evaluate the use of the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score in assessing the incidence and severity of organ dysfunction in critically ill patients.DesignProspective, multicenter study.SettingForty intensive care units (ICUs) in 16 countries.PatientsPatients admitted to the ICU in May 1995 (n = 1,449), excluding patients who underwent uncomplicated elective surgery with an ICU length of stay <48 hrs.InterventionsNone.Measurements And Main ResultsThe main outcome measures included incidence of dysfunction/failure of different organs and the relationship of this dysfunction with outcome. In this cohort of patients, the median length of ICU stay was 5 days, and the ICU mortality rate was 22%. Multiple organ dysfunction and high SOFA scores for any individual organ were associated with increased mortality. The presence of infection on admission (28.7% of patients) was associated with higher SOFA scores for each organ. The evaluation of a subgroup of 544 patients who stayed in the ICU for at least 1 wk showed that survivors and nonsurvivors followed a different course. This subgroup had greater respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurologic scores than the other patients. In this subgroup, the total SOFA score increased in 44% of the nonsurvivors but in only 20% of the survivors (p < .001). Conversely, the total SOFA score decreased in 33% of the survivors compared with 21% of the nonsurvivors (p < .001).ConclusionsThe SOFA score is a simple, but effective method to describe organ dysfunction/failure in critically ill patients. Regular, repeated scoring enables patient condition and disease development to be monitored and better understood. The SOFA score may enable comparison between patients that would benefit clinical trials.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…