title: Severity of illness.
abstract: Severity of illness scores are increasingly used in the intensive care environment to help predict outcome, to characterize disease severity and degree of organ dysfunction, to stratify patients for clinical trial enrollment, to assess resource use, and to compare intensive care unit (ICU) performance. This article reviews the most commonly used severity of illness scoring systems and discusses some of their uses and limitations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Intensive Care, Erasme University Hospital, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. jlvincen@ulb.ac.be
authors.forename: Jean-Louis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Vincent
authors.forename: Frederico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bruzzi de Carvalho
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods; D003422:Critical Care / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000592:standards; D009102:Multiple Organ Failure / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index