Scoring systems in the intensive care unit (ICU) can be useful to facilitate description of patient populations for ICU management and clinical trial enrollment, to enable comparison between ICUs or within the same ICU over time for quality control purposes, and perhaps, to guide and monitor individual patient treatment. To provide useful information, these systems must be extensively validated for use on different patient samples and in future populations. Scores must be accurate (good calibration and discrimination) and generalizable (good reproducibility and transportability across geographic, time, and methodologic boundaries).<sup>32 Justice A.C., Covinsky K.E., Berlin J.A. Assessing the generalizability of prognostic information Ann Intern Med 1999 ;  130 : 515

Cliccare qui per andare alla sezione Riferimenti</sup> Few scoring systems have been developed specifically for use in patients with sepsis although some have been customized for use in sepsis.<sup>36 Knaus W.A., Harrell F.E.J., LaBrecque J.F. , e al. Use of predicted risk of mortality to evaluate the efficacy of anticytokine therapy in sepsis. The rhIL-1ra Phase III Sepsis Syndrome Study Group Crit Care Med 1996 ;  24 : 46  [cross-ref]

Cliccare qui per andare alla sezione Riferimenti, 43 Le Gall J.R., Lemeshow S., Leleu G. , e al. Customized probability models for early severe sepsis in adult intensive care patients JAMA 1995 ;  237 : 644

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Two main types of scoring system have been developed for use in the ICU patient: those primarily focused on a single end-point, survival, and those focusing on describing morbidity as it evolves, organ dysfunction scores. This article briefly describes some of the most commonly used scoring systems that have been developed and discusses some practical issues related to their use.