Impact of qSOFA Score on the Outcome of Patients in ICU with Respiratory Tract Infection

Abstract

Acute respiratory infection (ARI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and tends to be a rapidly progressive illness due to pathogens having the potential for large scale epidemics. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), these annual epidemics result in 3–5 million severe illness cases and 290–650 thousand deaths all around the world. Influenza-like illnesses (ILI), a subset of ARIs, accounted for approximately 1.9 million deaths in children below 5 years of age worldwide in 2010. The introduction of the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) score thus represents the effort to identify high risk patients as early as possible by using basic clinical criteria instead complex biomarkers. The score includes respiratory rate, Glasgow Coma Scale and systolic blood pressure, based on the analysis preceding the current sepsis definition algorithm. A score of at least two points is considered positive. Severeral publications have reported the correlation between a positive qSOFA score and poor outcome in septic patient. score ranges from 0 to 3 points. The presence of 2 or more qSOFA points near the onset of infection was associated with a greater risk of death or prolonged intensive care unit stay. These are outcomes that are more common in infected patients who may be septic than those with uncomplicated infection. Based upon these findings, the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis recommends qSOFA as a simple prompt to identify infected patients outside the ICU who are likely to be septic. We aimed to assess the impact of qSOFA score on the outcome of patients in ICU with respiratory tract infection. This is observational prospective study included 122 patients in ICU department presented by respiratory infection. Diagnosis of inf