SCORES FOR TREATMENT DECISIONS AND EVALUA TION FOR INDIVIDUAL INTENSIVE-CARE PATIENTS - BASICS

The utility of scoring systems in intensive care and emergency medicin e has been approved for the classification of severity of diseases, qu ality assurance and cost performance of patient groups. There are obvi ous methodological pitfalls in using probabilities of mortility, which are estimates of risk of death, to predict specific outcomes for indi vidual patients. They can only be used as a supplement to clinical dec ision making. Use of daily scoring systems can help in the description of the disease course of patients under treatment (trend analysis).