Development of a clinical scoring system for the diagnosis of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis

This study developed a clinical score based on clinical and radiographic data for the diagnosis of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (SNPT). SNPT was defined as a positive culture in Ogawa in a patient with two negative sputum smears. Data from patients admitted to the emergency ward with respiratory symptoms and negative acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smears was analyzed by means of logistic regression to develop the predictive score.Two hundred and sixty two patients were included. Twenty patients had SNPT. The variables included in the final model were hemoptysis, weight loss, age > 45 years old, productive cough, upper-lobe infiltrate, and miliary infiltrate. With those, a score was constructed. The score values ranged from -2 to 6. The area under the curve for the ROC curve was 0.83 (95 percent CI 0.74-0.90). A score of value 0 or less was associated with a sensitivity of 93 percent and a score of more than 4 points was associated with a specificity of 92 percent for SNPT. Fifty-two point twenty-nine percent of patients had scores of less than one or more than four, what provided strong evidence against and in favor, respectively, for the diagnosis of SNPT. The score developed is a cheap and useful clinical tool for the diagnosis of SNPT and can be used to help therapeutic decisions in patients with suspicion of having SNPT.

Application of the Mortality in Emergency Department Sepsis (MEDS) Scoring System in the Evaluation of Suspected Sepsis in an Emergency Department

PURPOSE: Recent guidelines for sepsis treatment emphasizes the need for early recognition of disease, leading to the development of the MEDS scoring system. However, there has been no prospective validation or comparison against other scoring systems. Therefore, we prospectively validated the MEDS scoring system and compared it withMultiple Organ Dysfunction Score (MODS) and Sepsisrelated Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scoring systems. METHODS: MEDS, MODS, and SOFA scores of 288 patients who were suspected to have systemic infection were calculated at the times of their emergency department visits, and clinical data of the patients were reviewed after six months. Results: MEDS, MODS, and SOFA scoring systems were all valid in the prediction of mortality according to logistic regression analysis. The results of probit analysis revealed significant and direct relationships between the scores and the mortality rate and demonstrated the parallelism of the mortality prediction of the three scoring systems. The cut-off values for the MEDS scoring system successfully divided subjects into five groups according to their risk for death. And the MEDS score well predicted the admission to ward or intensive care unit in survived patients. CONCLUSION: MEDS, MODS, and SOFA scor all were good predictors of outcome for patients with suspected sepsis and showed the same degree of predictive power. The MEDS scoring system, however, featured ease of calculation and definite clinical cut-off values which were useful in guiding decisions about treatment options. It also was well correlated with the prognosis of survived patients. We believe it to be the most useful and appropriate clinical prediction tool in cases of suspected sepsis in the emergency department.

Modified CLIP Score as a New Prognostic Index for Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma / 대한간학회지

BACKGROUNDS/AIMS: The prognosis of cirrhotic patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) depends on both residual liver function and tumor characteristics. The aims of this study was to construct a new prognostic index for HCC patients: the modified CLIP score, and to compare its discriminatory ability and predictive power with those of the CLIP score that is currently the most commonly used integrated staging score in patients of HCC. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of 237 cases of HCC diagnosed at Dong-A university hospital was performed. Prognostic analysis was performed for single variables by estimating survival distributions with the Kaplan-Meier's method, and statistically compared by the log-rank test. RESULTS: Patients had a mean age of 57.5 years and were predominantly males (79.7%). The overall median survival period was 25.7 months. It was correlated to ascites, portal vein thrombosis, AFP, tumor size, and Child-Pugh classification. The median survival period was 41.0, 25.2, 13.8, 13.4, and 6.5 months for CLIP scores 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 to 6, respectively (P<0.001), and 42.1, 34.0, 25.7, 14.0, and 6.8 months for modified CLIP scores 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 to 6, respectively (P<0.001). The Kaplan-Meier's curve showed that the modified CLIP score had additional explanatory power above that of the CLIP score. CONCLUSIONS: The modified CLIP score, compared with the CLIP score, particularly in the score 2- to 3- patient groups of HCC, had greater discriminant ability and survival predictive power, but was not able to discriminate 4- to 6- patient group.