Principles of Critical Care > Part I. An Overview of the Approach to and Organization of Critical Care > Chapter 6. Assessment of Severity of Illness Cheryl L. Holmes,  Genevieve Gregoire,  James A. Russell

Key Points

"Severity-of-illness scoring systems were developed to evaluate the delivery of care and provide prediction of outcome of groups of critically ill patients who are admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). The purpose of this chapter is to review the scientific basis for these scoring systems and to make recommendations for their use. While there is a growing recognition that when properly administered, these tools are useful in assessing and comparing patient populations with diverse critical illnesses, their use for predicting individual patient outcome is controversial and unresolved...."