External Validation of the qSOFA Score in Emergency Department Patients With Pneumonia

Background Pneumonia is the leading cause of sepsis. In 2016, the 3rd International Consensus Conference for Sepsis released the Quick Sepsis-Related Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) to identify risk for poor outcomes in sepsis. Objective We sought to externally validate qSOFA in emergency department (ED) patients with pneumonia and compare the accuracy of qSOFA to systemic inflammatory response syndrome score (SIRS), Confusion, Respiratory Rate and Blood Pressure (CRB), Confusion, Respiratory Rate, Blood Pressure and Age (CRB-65), and DS CRB-65, which is based on the CRB-65 score and includes two additional items-presence of underlying comorbid disease and blood oxygen saturation. Methods A subgroup analysis of U.S. Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group (USCIITG-Lung Injury Prevention Study [LIPS]; ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT00889772) prospective cohort. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcomes were measures of intensive care unit (ICU) utilization. Sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC) were reported. Results From March to August 2009, 5584 patients were enrolled; 713 met inclusion criteria. Median age was 61 years (interquartile range 49-75 years). SIRS criteria had the highest sensitivity for death (89%) and lowest specificity (25%), while CRB had the highest specificity (88%) and lowest sensitivity (31%), followed by qSOFA (80% and 53%, respectively). This trend was maintained for the secondary outcomes. There was no significant difference in the AUC for death using qSOFA (AUC 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.66-0.84), SIRS (AUC 0.70; 95% CI 0.61-0.78), CRB (AUC 0.71; 95% CI 0.62-0.80), CRB-65 (AUC 0.71; 95% CI 0.63-0.80), and DS CRB-65 (AUC 0.73; 95% CI 0.64-0.82). Conclusions In this multicenter observational study of ED patients hospitalized with pneumonia, we found no significant differences between qSOFA and SIRS for predicting in-hospital death. In addition, several popular pneumonia-specific severity scores performed nearly identically to qSOFA score in predicting death and ICU utilization. Validation is needed in a larger sample.