Performance of the Pediatric Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Score in Assessing the Prognosis of Children with Sepsis in A PICU of A Developing Country: A Single-Center Retrospective Observational Study

Background: The Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis 3) was based on the sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score. Matics and Sanchez-Pinto contrived a SOFA score designed specifically for pediatric patients (pSOFA) to evaluate the prognosis of children with sepsis according to the degree of organ dysfunction. Objectives: The aim of our study was to evaluate the predictive validity of the pSOFA for in-hospital mortality in childrenwith sepsis in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of a developing country. Methods: This was a single-center retrospective observational study. The data of 516 children diagnosed with sepsis according to the 2005 International Pediatric Sepsis Consensus Conference was retrospectively analyzed. The patients were divided into survivor group and non-survivor group according to the clinical outcome of 28 days after admission. The variables of pSOFA score, PELOD-2 score and P-MODS were collected and scored. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was plotted; the efficiency of the pSOFA score for predicting death was evaluated by the area under ROC curve (AUC). Results: ROC curve analysis showed that the AUCs of the pSOFA score, PELOD-2 score and P-MODS predicting the prognosis of children with sepsis in a PICU of a developing country were 0.937, 0.916, and 0.761, respectively (all P < 0.05). Conclusions: The pSOFA score is effective and has the ability to assess the prognosis of children with sepsis in a PICU of a developing country.