Validation of Pediatric Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (pSOFA) Scores to Predict Critical Events in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Objective: To determine the prognostic value of the Pediatric Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (pSOFA) to discriminate critical events, including code events and intubations, in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Methods: We performed an observational cohort study of all critical events in a quaternary care PICU between 5/2020 and 4/2023. Critical events were extracted from our hospital communications platform and from the electronic health record (EHR). The pediatric sequential organ failure assessment (pSOFA) scores were prospectively calculated in real-time in our EHR every 15 min during the study period for data-driven situational awareness and were retrospectively analyzed for this study. Each encounter was divided into 6-h time blocks and we assessed the performance of the highest pSOFA score in each block at discriminating the occurrence of a critical event in the subsequent block. Results:There were 5687 unique patient encounters included in the analysis. Critical events were identified in 578 out of 169 486 time blocks (prevalence 0.3%), which included 103 code events and 498 intubation events, in 392 unique PICU encounters. The total pSOFA score in a 6-h time block was significantly associated with a subsequent code event (odds ratio [OR] 1.19, 95% CI 1.13-1.24) or intubation (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.10-1.15). Several organ-specific pSOFA subscores were also significantly associated with the outcomes. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) for the total pSOFA score was 0.67 for a code event and 0.65 for intubation. Using a pSOFA score cutoff of ≥8, the positive predictive value was 0.8% and the negative predictive value was 99.7% for any critical event. Conclusions: The pSOFA score is significantly associated with critical events in the PICU, however, it does not have adequate performance to be used for situational awareness by itself.