In-hospital mortality of acutely ill medical patients admitted to a resource poor hospital in sub-Saharan Africa and to a Canadian Regional Hospital compared using the abbreviated VitalPAC™ Early Warning Score

Abstract Background the development of validated early warning scores that only require the measurement of vital signs at the bedside has provided for the first time a practical and affordable method of comparing the outcomes of similar patients admitted to hospital in the developed and developing world. Methods we compared the outcomes of patients with the same abbreviated version of the VitalPAC™ early warning score at the time of hospital admission in a Canadian and Ugandan hospital. 844 acutely ill medical patients admitted to Kitovu Hospital, Masaka, Uganda and 48,696 patients admitted to the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC), Ontario, Canada were examined. Results apart from those patients with an abbreviated ViEWS value of 10 there was no statistically significant difference in the in-hospital mortality of Kitvou and TBRHSC patients with the same score on admission. Using arbitrary ranges of the abbreviated ViEWS the 30 day Kaplan–Meier survival curves of Kitovu patients were either the same or better than those of TBRHSC patients. Conclusion the in-hospital mortality of patients with the same abbreviated ViEWS on hospital admission is similar in TBRHSC and Kitovu Hospital.