ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the value of Pediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS) in identifying the condition of critically ill children.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A total of 120 children who were transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) from the general ward during hospitalization or admitted to the PICU after emergency treatment in the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University from January to December, 2016 were enrolled as the PICU group. The other 120 children who were admitted to the general ward in the hospital were used as the control group. According to the disease type, the PICU group was further divided into two subgroups: respiratory/circulatory system diseases (n=55) and nervous/other system diseases (n=65). The PEWS score on admission was recorded, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to analyze the value of PEWS in evaluating patients' condition.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The PICU group had a significantly higher PEWS score than the control group (P<0.05). The respiratory/circulatory system disease subgroup had a significantly higher PEWS score than the nervous/other system disease subgroup (P<0.05). In predicting whether the child was admitted to the PICU, PEWS had a sensitivity of 85%, a specificity of 95%, and an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.951 (95% confidence interval: 0.923-0.980) at the optimal cut-off value of 3.5 (PEWS score). The AUC of PEWS was 0.768 in the nervous/other system disease subgroup and 0.968 in the respiratory/circulatory system disease subgroup. The mortality rate of children with a PEWS score of >6, 4-6 and ≤3 was 40%, 21% and 0 respectively (P<0.001).</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>PEWS can well identify disease severity in critically ill children, and it has different sensitivities in children with different varieties of diseases. PEWS has a good value in predicting children's prognosis.</p>