Accuracy of SOFA, qSOFA, and SIRS scores for mortality in cancer patients admitted to an intensive care unit with suspected infection

Abstract Purpose To compare the prognostic accuracy of Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and quick SOFA (qSOFA) with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria in critically ill cancer patients with suspected infection. Methods Data for 450 cancer patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in 2014 with a suspected infection were retrospectively analyzed. Sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) values for SOFA, qSOFA, and SIRS criteria for ICU and hospital mortalities were calculated. Mortalities according to Sepsis-2 stratification (e.g., sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock) and Sepsis-3 stratification (e.g., infection, sepsis, and septic shock) were also compared. Results SOFA outperformed SIRS in predicting mortalities for ICU [(AUC, 0.76; 95% confidence interval (CI) 95%, 0.71–0.81) vs. (AUC, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.56–0.67), p p p  = .02) vs. (AUC, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.64–0.74; p Conclusions SOFA and qSOFA were more sensitive and accurate than SIRS in predicting ICU and hospital mortality for critically ill cancer patients with suspected infection.