Validation of the RIM Score-COVID in the Spanish SEMI-COVID-19 Registry

Area of Science:

• Infectious Diseases
• Clinical Medicine
• Biostatistics

Background:

• COVID-19 poses a significant global health threat, necessitating tools for identifying high-risk patients.
• The RIM Score-COVID, a nomogram using clinical and analytical parameters, was developed to predict in-hospital mortality during the initial pandemic wave.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the predictive accuracy of the RIM Score-COVID within the Spanish SEMI-COVID-19 Registry.
• To assess the score's performance across different phases of the pandemic, including pre-vaccination and vaccination periods.

Main Methods:

• The RIM Score-COVID, incorporating age, sex, oxygen saturation, C-reactive protein, and neutrophil-to-platelet ratio, was applied to 22,566 patients in the SEMI-COVID-19 Registry.
• Patient data were analyzed from three distinct time periods: T1 (first wave), T2 (second wave, pre-vaccination), and T3 (vaccination period).
• Model performance was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC).

Main Results:

• The overall AUROC for the RIM Score-COVID in the SEMI-COVID-19 Registry was 0.823.
• The score demonstrated strong predictive ability in the first wave (T1 AUROC: 0.834) and maintained good performance in subsequent periods (T2 AUROC: 0.792, T3 AUROC: 0.799).

Conclusions:

• The RIM Score-COVID is a validated, user-friendly tool for predicting in-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients.
• Its consistent predictive performance across successive pandemic waves highlights its utility in emergency departments for risk stratification.