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The care of critically ill patients requires a thorough understanding of pathophysiology and centers initially on the resuscitation of patients at the extremes of physiologic deterioration. This resuscitation is often fast-paced and occurs early, without a detailed awareness of the patient’s chronic medical problems. While physiologic stabilization is taking place, intensivists attempt to gather important background medical information to supplement the real-time assessment of the patient’s current physiologic conditions. Numerous tools are available to assist intensivists in the accurate assessment of pathophysiology and management of incipient organ failure, offering a window of opportunity for diagnosing and treating underlying disease(s) in a stabilized patient. Indeed, the use of invasive interventions such as mechanical ventilation and renal replacement therapy is commonplace in the intensive care unit (ICU). An appreciation of the risks and benefits of such aggressive and often invasive interventions is vital to ensure an optimal outcome. Nonetheless, intensivists must recognize when a patient’s chances for recovery are remote or nonexistent and must counsel and comfort dying patients and their significant others. Critical care physicians often must redirect the goals of care from resuscitation and cure to comfort when the resolution of an underlying illness is not possible.
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ASSESSMENT OF ILLNESS SEVERITY
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In the ICU, illnesses are frequently categorized by degree of severity. Numerous severity-of-illness (SOI) scoring systems have been developed and validated over the past three decades. Although these scoring systems have been validated as tools to assess populations of critically ill patients, their utility in predicting individual patient outcomes is not clear. SOI scoring systems are important for defining populations of critically ill patients. Such systematic scoring allows effective comparison of groups of patients enrolled in clinical trials. In verifying a purported benefit of therapy, investigators must be confident that different groups involved in a clinical trial have similar illness severities. SOI scores are also useful in guiding hospital administrative policies, directing the allocation of resources such as nursing and ancillary care and assisting in assessments of quality of ICU care over time. Scoring system validations are based on the premise that age, chronic medical illnesses, and derangements from normal physiology are associated with increased mortality rates. All existing SOI scoring systems are derived from patients who have already been admitted to the ICU.
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SOI scoring systems cannot be used to predict survival in individual patients. No established scoring systems that purport to direct clinicians’ decision-making regarding criteria for admission to an ICU are available. Thus the use of SOI scoring systems to direct therapy and clinical decision-making cannot be recommended. Instead, these tools should be used as a source of important data to complement clinical bedside decision-making.
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The most commonly utilized scoring systems are the SOFA (Sequential Organ Failure Assessment), the APACHE (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation), and the SAPS (Simplified Acute Physiology Score) systems.
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THE SOFA SCORING SYSTEM
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