[Predictive value of a combined physiologic-therapeutic oriented score system in patients of intensive internal...

171 consecutive patients of a medical intensive care unit (age 18 to 81 years, mortality 24.6%) who were treated in the ICU for at least 72 hours were investigated in order to test the hypothesis, that the combination of therapeutic scoring (TISS) and physiologic scoring (APS) may improve the prognostic significance of score systems and/or the severity of disease classification in critically ill patients. Discrimination of survivors and non-survivors of the combined score was comparable to the results of isolated scores. A higher weighting of the physiology parameters in the combined score did not improve its prognostic significance. On the other hand, only the combined score implicated a linear increase of mortality with increasing score point values. - We conclude, that the combined score system improves the severity of disease classification in critically ill medical patients.