Accuracy of SOFA, qSOFA, and SIRS scores for mortality in cancer patients admitted to an intensive care unit with suspected infection.

PURPOSE: To compare the prognostic accuracy of Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and quick SOFA (qSOFA) with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria in critically ill cancer patients with suspected infection.

METHODS: Data for 450 cancer patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in 2014 with a suspected infection were retrospectively analyzed. Sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) values for SOFA, qSOFA, and SIRS criteria for ICU and hospital mortalities were calculated. Mortalities according to Sepsis-2 stratification (e.g., sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock) and Sepsis-3 stratification (e.g., infection, sepsis, and septic shock) were also compared.

RESULTS: SOFA outperformed SIRS in predicting mortalities for ICU [(AUC, 0.76; 95% confidence interval (CI) 95%, 0.71-0.81) vs. (AUC, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.56-0.67), p < .01] and hospital [(AUC, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.65-0.74) vs. (AUC, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.52-0.63), p < .01)] patients. Similarly, qSOFA outperformed SIRS for both settings [(AUC, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.65-0.76, p = .02) vs. (AUC, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.64-0.74; p < .01), respectively].

CONCLUSIONS: SOFA and qSOFA were more sensitive and accurate than SIRS in predicting ICU and hospital mortality for critically ill cancer patients with suspected infection.