A prospective, internal validation of an emergency patient triage tool for use in a low resource setting.

Assess the performance of a simple triage disposition score based on mental status, mobility and either oxygen saturation or respiratory rate by three principal metrics: 24 h mortality, the need for hospital admission and the urgency ranking of patient presentations. Prospective observational non-interventional study of consecutive patients presenting to the emergency and outpatient departments of a low-resource sub-Saharan hospital. Out of 14,585 consecutive patients arriving to hospital 1,804 (12.4%) were admitted and 39 died (0.3%) within 24 hours. No patients with normal mental status or a stable independent gait died within 24 h, and 95% of those who did had an oxygen saturation <94%. The c statistic of the score for death within 24 hours was >0.95 and not significantly changed if respiratory rate replaced oxygen saturation as a score component, or mental status was assessed subjectively or objectively. However, an objective measure of mental status significantly reduced the c statistic for hospital admission from 0.970 SE 0.003 to 0.956 SE 0.004, The score identified patients who subsequently required hospital admission and who were likely to die within 24 hours.

Informations de copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of African Federation for Emergency Medicine.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

John Kellett is a founder and major shareholder of Tapa Healthcare DAC, a start-up medical software company. The other authors have no conflict of interest.