SAPS III

SAPS III is a system for predicting mortality, one of several ICU scoring systems. Its name stands for 'Simplified Acute Physiology Score' and is a supplement to the SAPS II scoring system. It has been designed to provide a real-life predicted mortality for a patient by following a well defined procedure, based on a mathematical model that needs calibration. Predicted mortalities are good when comparing groups of patients, and having near-real-life mortalities means, that this scoring system can answer questions like 'if the patients from hospital A had been in hospital B, what would their mortality have been?'. SAPS III is a system for predicting mortality, one of several ICU scoring systems. Its name stands for 'Simplified Acute Physiology Score' and is a supplement to the SAPS II scoring system. It has been designed to provide a real-life predicted mortality for a patient by following a well defined procedure, based on a mathematical model that needs calibration. Predicted mortalities are good when comparing groups of patients, and having near-real-life mortalities means, that this scoring system can answer questions like 'if the patients from hospital A had been in hospital B, what would their mortality have been?'. However, in order to achieve this functionality, you must calibrate the system, which is additional effort, and it is difficult to compare two groups of patients if they were not scored using the same calibration. SAPS III is therefore not suitable by itself for publishing data about the morbidity of a single group of patients.