title: Assessment of sickness severity of illness in neonates: review of various neonatal illness scoring systems.
abstract: Sickness severity scores are widely used for neonates admitted to neonatal intensive care units to predict severity of illness and risk of mortality and long-term outcome. These scores are also used frequently for quality assessment among various neonatal intensive care unit and hospital. Accurate and reliable measures of severity of illness are required for unbiased and reliable comparisons especially for benchmarking or comparative quality improvement care studies. These scores also serve to control for population differences when performing studies such as clinical trials, outcome evaluations, and evaluation of resource utilisation. Although presently there are multiple scores designed for neonates' sickness assessment but none of the score is ideal. Each score has its own advantages and disadvantages. We did literature search for identifying all neonatal sickness severity score and in this review article, we discuss these scores along with their merits and demerits.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Neonatology , Deep Hospital , Ludhiana , India.
authors.forename: Bhawandeep
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Garg
authors.affiliation: b Department of Neonatology , National Institute of Medical Sciences , Jaipur , India.
authors.forename: Deepak
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: c Department of Pulmonology , Mofid Pediatrics Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences , Tehran , Iran.
authors.forename: Nazanin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Farahbakhsh
mesh_terms: D001034:Apgar Score; D001724:Birth Weight; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007226:Infant Mortality; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature; D007235:Infant, Premature, Diseases / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy; D007363:Intensive Care Units, Neonatal; D015931:Intensive Care, Neonatal; D015997:Neonatal Screening / Q000379:methods*; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D058996:Quality Improvement; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D012720:Severity of Illness Index
keywords: Neonate; mortality; sickness severity score