["Simplified Acute Physiology Score" (SAPS II) ina the assessment of severity of illness in surgical intensive care patients].
BACKGROUND
In 1993, Le Gall proposed a new Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS II) to assess the severity of illness in intensive care patients and to predict the risk of hospital mortality using a large data base of more than 13,000 patients of different intensive care units. Up to the present time, no satisfactory form of validation for surgical intensive care patients has been available. We investigated the prognostic quality of this score system for the assessment of the severity of the illness in surgical intensive care patients.


METHODS
Between October 1997 and December 1998, 310 consecutive patients were included in our study. We calculated the SAPS II score according to the published guidelines. Additionally, we calculated the risk of mortality by referring to the score. We used a receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis for statistical evaluation.


RESULTS
The median duration of stay on our intensive care unit was 8.4 days. In all patients, the mean SAPS II was 29.9 +/- 12.7. In the survivors, calculation of mean SAPS II was 27.7 +/- 11.4. In the non-survivors, mean SAPS II was 45.7 +/- 11.2. The predicted risk of mortality was 15.7%, the actual risk of mortality was 15.8%.


CONCLUSIONS
The SAPS II score has proved to be a good prognostic instrument in surgical intensive care patients. SAPS II is particularly effective in providing an exact estimation of the risk of death, classifying patient groups in clinical studies, epidemiological investigations, and quality assessment.
Agha
A
A
Klinik und Poliklinik für Chirurgie, Klinikum der Universität Regensburg, 93042 Regensburg. Ayman.Agha@klinik.uni-regensburg.de
Bein
T
T
Fröhlich
D
D
Höfler
S
S
Krenz
D
D
Jauch
K W
KW
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002423:Cause of Death; D003422:Critical Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005858:Germany; D017052:Hospital Mortality; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000401:mortality*; D012372:ROC Curve; D012306:Risk; D012720:Severity of Illness Index