• Yonathan Freund, Najla Lemachatti, Evguenia Krastinova, Marie Van Laer, Yann-Erick Claessens, Aurélie Avondo, Céline Occelli, Anne-Laure Feral-Pierssens, Jennifer Truchot, Mar Ortega, Bruno Carneiro, Julie Pernet, Pierre-Géraud Claret, Fabrice Dami, Ben Bloom, Bruno Riou, Sébastien Beaune, and French Society of Emergency Medicine Collaborators Group.
• Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Paris Univ-06, Paris, France2Emergency Department, Hôpital Pitie-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP), Paris, France.
• JAMA. 2017 Jan 17; 317 (3): 301-308.

ImportanceAn international task force recently redefined the concept of sepsis. This task force recommended the use of the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) score instead of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria to identify patients at high risk of mortality. However, these new criteria have not been prospectively validated in some settings, and their added value in the emergency department remains unknown.ObjectiveTo prospectively validate qSOFA as a mortality predictor and compare the performances of the new sepsis criteria to the previous ones.Design, Settings, And ParticipantsInternational prospective cohort study, conducted in France, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland between May and June 2016. In the 30 participating emergency departments, for a 4-week period, consecutive patients who visited the emergency departments with suspected infection were included. All variables from previous and new definitions of sepsis were collected. Patients were followed up until hospital discharge or death.ExposuresMeasurement of qSOFA, SOFA, and SIRS.Main Outcomes And MeasuresIn-hospital mortality.ResultsOf 1088 patients screened, 879 were included in the analysis. Median age was 67 years (interquartile range, 47-81 years), 414 (47%) were women, and 379 (43%) had respiratory tract infection. Overall in-hospital mortality was 8%: 3% for patients with a qSOFA score lower than 2 vs 24% for those with qSOFA score of 2 or higher (absolute difference, 21%; 95% CI, 15%-26%). The qSOFA performed better than both SIRS and severe sepsis in predicting in-hospital mortality, with an area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC) of 0.80 (95% CI, 0.74-0.85) vs 0.65 (95% CI, 0.59-0.70) for both SIRS and severe sepsis (P < .001; incremental AUROC, 0.15; 95% CI, 0.09-0.22). The hazard ratio of qSOFA score for death was 6.2 (95% CI, 3.8-10.3) vs 3.5 (95% CI, 2.2-5.5) for severe sepsis.Conclusions And RelevanceAmong patients presenting to the emergency department with suspected infection, the use of qSOFA resulted in greater prognostic accuracy for in-hospital mortality than did either SIRS or severe sepsis. These findings provide support for the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3) criteria in the emergency department setting.Trial Registrationclinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT02738164.

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