The revised Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation System (APACHE II) is more effective than the Glasgow Coma Scale for prediction of mortality in head-injured patients with systemic trauma.

BACKGROUND The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is popular, simple, and reliable, and provides information about the level of consciousness in trauma patients. Nevertheless, the necessity of using a more complex system than GCS has been questioned recently. The revised Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation system (APACHE II) is a physiologically based system including 12 physiological variables, and it also includes GCS. In addition, it is thought to be superior to GCS due to recognition of increasing age and significant chronic health problems, which adversely affect mortality. METHODS This retrospective study included 266 patients (195 males, 71 females; mean age 60.5; range 14 to 87 years) with head injury associated with systemic trauma in 2003 and 2004. RESULTS Mortality increased in the elderly group (p<0.001). Mean survival score in APACHE II was 38.0 and death score was 68.7 (p<0.001); these values in GCS were 10.4 and 6.3, respectively (p<0.001). APACHE II at the cut-off point was better than GCS in the prediction of death and survival in patients (p<0.01). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for sensitivity and specificity was larger in APACHE II (0.892+/-0.028) than GCS (0.862+/-0.029). CONCLUSION For the assessment of mortality, the GCS score still provides simple, less-time consuming and effective information concerning head injury patients, especially in emergencies; however, for the prediction of mortality in multitrauma patients, APACHE II is superior to GCS since it includes the main physiologic parameters of patients.