ORIGINAL ARTICLE – A comparison of APACHE II and APACHE IV scoring systems in predicting outcome in patients admitted with stroke to an intensive care unit

Abstract

ntroduction: Stroke is the second major cause of death worldwide. APACHE IV is a successful scoring system assessing severity of illness and prognosis of ICU patients. The objective of this study was to compare APACHE IV scoring system for patients admitted with stroke with APACHE II scoring system Methodology: We included all patients with the diagnosis of stroke, who were admitted to intensive care unit of our hospital for tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation, between 1 January 2008 and 1 February 2009 from prospectively collected ICU database. Observed mortality rates were compared with predicted mortality rates for both the APACHE IV and APACHE II scoring systems, SMR, sensitivity and specificity were determined. The mortality percentages were predicted using the APACHE IV system and were compared with the observed data. The statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS for Windows version 15.0. The qualitative variables were compared to a χ² (chi-squared) test.