Assessment of SOFA Score as a Diagnostic Indicator in Intensive Care Medicine

Intensive care unit mortality is strongly associated with organ failure rate and severity. The sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score is assessed to evaluate its efficacy as a diagnostic indicator. Statistical analyses investigate the SOFA score distributions in the days leading up to patient mortality and patient discharge. It is found that the SOFA score is not an effective predictor of patient mortality, but it is a useful tool for prediction of patient discharge from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The distribution of overall SOFA score was observed not to change notably in the days leading up to patient death. However, the SOFA score distribution was observed to have a trend towards lower SOFA scores in the days leading up to patient discharge. Finally, assessment of the individual components of the overall SOFA score indicated that the coagulation and cardiovascular scores showed the highest correlation to mortality and are therefore the most useful individual groups to be used as diagnostic