• Anne Radtke, Roman Pfister, Kathrin Kuhr, Matthias Kochanek, and Guido Michels.
• Department III of Internal Medicine, University of Cologne, Kerpener Str. 62, 50937 Cologne, Germany. Electronic address: anne.radtke@uk-koeln.de.
• J Crit Care. 2017 Oct 1; 41: 204-208.

PurposeThe aim of the FEELING-ON-ICU study was to compare mortality estimations of critically ill patients based on 'gut feeling' of medical staff and by Acute Physiology And Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II, Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA).Materials And MethodsMedical staff estimated patients' mortality risks via questionnaires. APACHE II, SAPS II and SOFA were calculated retrospectively from records. Estimations were compared with actual in-hospital mortality using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under the ROC curve (AUC).Results66 critically ill patients (60.6% male, mean age 63±15years (range 30-86)) were evaluated each by a nurse (n=66, male 32.4%) and a physician (n=66, male 67.6%). 15 (22.7%) patients died on the intensive care unit. AUC was largest for estimations by physicians (AUC 0.814 (95% CI 0.705-0.923)), followed by SOFA (AUC 0.749 (95% CI 0.629-0.868)), SAPS II (AUC 0.723 (95% CI 0.597-0.849)), APACHE II (AUC 0.721 (95% CI 0.595-0.847)) and nursing staff (AUC 0.669 (95% CI 0.529-0.810)) (p<0.05 for all results).ConclusionsThe concept of physicians' 'gut feeling' was comparable to classical objective scores in mortality estimations of critically ill patients. Concerning practicability physicians' evaluations were advantageous to complex score calculation.Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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