Gazeta Médica (Sep 2023)

Pediatric Early Warning System na Unidade de Internamento de Curta Duração

  • Miguel Paiva Pereira,
  • Paula Poção,
  • Hugo de Castro Faria

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 1

Abstract

Read online

INTRODUCTION: Pediatric Early Warning Scores were developed as standardized clinical aides for early recognition of clinical deterioration in children. These systems improve situational awareness among professionals. A major concern is the workload increase. After implementation in the Short Stay Unit, we intended to evaluate its effectiveness in our population. METHODS: We reviewed medical records of children admitted to the Short Stay Unit between July 2017 and February 2020. We developed a statistical analysis to evaluate the test performance. RESULTS: One thousand three hundred twenty-three patients were included (median age 3.07 years-old); 5.7% were considered to have clinical deterioration (maximum score median 7.00 vs 2.00) (p<0.001). The area under the ROC curve was 0.947. Defining 4 as cut-off value, the sensitivity is 97.1% (specificity 82.7%). CONCLUSION: This score proved to be a good test for early identification of clinical deterioration in our population.

Keywords