Comparison of Performance Characteristics in Early Warning Scoring Tools for Diagnosis of Intubation and Mortality Among COVID-19 Patients.

Introduction: Early warning scores serve as valuable tools for predicting adverse events in patients. This study aimed to compare the diagnostic performance of National Early Warning Score, Hamilton Early Warning Score, Standardized Early Warning Score, and Triage Early Warning Score in forecasting intubation and mortality among patients with coronavirus disease 2019.

Methods: This predictive correlation study included 370 patients admitted to the emergency department of 22 Bahman Hospital in Neyshabur, Iran, from December 2021 to March 2022. The aforementioned scores were assessed daily upon patient admission and throughout a 1-month hospitalization period, alongside intubation and mortality occurrences. Data analysis used SPSS 26 and MEDCALC 20.0.13 software. We adhered to the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies guidelines to ensure the accurate reporting of our study.

Results: The patients' mean age was 65.03 ± 18.47 years, with 209 (56.5%) being male. Both Standardized Early Warning Score and Hamilton Early Warning Score demonstrated high diagnostic performance, with area under the curve values of 0.92 and 0.95, respectively. For Standardized Early Warning Score, the positive likelihood ratio was 10.81 for intubation and 17.90 for mortality, whereas for Hamilton Early Warning Score, the positive likelihood ratio was 7.88 for intubation and 10.40 for mortality. The negative likelihood ratio values were 0.23 and 0.17 for Standardized Early Warning Score and 0.21 and 0.18 for Hamilton Early Warning Score, respectively, for the 24-hour period preceding intubation events and mortality.

Discussion: Findings suggest that Standardized Early Warning Score, followed by Hamilton Early Warning Score, has superior diagnostic performance in predicting intubation and mortality in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 within 24 hours before these outcomes. Therefore, serial assessments of Hamilton Early Warning Score or Standardized Early Warning Score may be valuable tools for health care providers in identifying high-risk patients with coronavirus disease 2019 who require intubation or are at increased risk of mortality.