• Sérgio Madeira, Ricardo Rodrigues, António Tralhão, Miguel Santos, Carla Almeida, Marta Marques, Jorge Ferreira, Luís Raposo, José Neves, and Miguel Mendes.
• Department of Cardiology, Hospital de Santa Cruz, Lisbon, Portugal serg.lou.madeira@gmail.com.
• Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg. 2016 Feb 1; 22 (2): 141-8.

ObjectivesThe European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) has been established as a tool for assisting decision-making in surgical patients and as a benchmark for quality assessment. Infective endocarditis often requires surgical treatment and is associated with high mortality. This study was undertaken to (i) validate both versions of the EuroSCORE, the older logistic EuroSCORE I and the recently developed EuroSCORE II and to compare their performances; (ii) identify predictors other than those included in the EuroSCORE models that might further improve their performance.MethodsWe retrospectively studied 128 patients from a single-centre registry who underwent heart surgery for active infective endocarditis between January 2007 and November 2014. Binary logistic regression was used to find independent predictors of mortality and to create a new prediction model. Discrimination and calibration of models were assessed by receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis, calibration curves and the Hosmer-Lemeshow test.ResultsThe observed perioperative mortality was 16.4% (n = 21). The median EuroSCORE I and EuroSCORE II were 13.9% interquartile range (IQ) (7.0-35.0) and 6.6% IQ (3.5-18.2), respectively. Discriminative power was numerically higher for EuroSCORE II {area under the curve (AUC) of 0.83 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.75-0.91]} than for EuroSCORE I [0.75 (95% CI, 0.66-0.85), P = 0.09]. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test showed good calibration for EuroSCORE II (P = 0.08) but not for EuroSCORE I (P = 0.04). EuroSCORE I tended to over-predict and EuroSCORE II to under-predict mortality. Among the variables known to be associated with greater infective endocarditis severity, only prosthetic valve infective endocarditis remained an independent predictor of mortality [odds ratio (OR) 6.6; 95% CI, 1.1-39.5; P = 0.04]. The new model including the EuroSCORE II variables and variables known to be associated with greater infective endocarditis severity showed an AUC of 0.87 (95% CI, 0.79-0.94) and differed significantly from EuroSCORE I (P = 0.03) but not from EuroSCORE II (P = 0.4).ConclusionsBoth EuroSCORE I and II satisfactorily stratify risk in active infective endocarditis; however, EuroSCORE II performed better in the overall comparison. Specific endocarditis features will increase model complexity without an unequivocal improvement in predictive ability.© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. All rights reserved.

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