key: cord-0976873-hhmnd0tl
authors: Accordino, Silvia; Sozzi, Fabiola; Canetta, Ciro
title: Performance of NEWS and NEWS-C in Acute Medical no COVID-19 Patients
date: 2021-07-22
journal: Resuscitation
DOI: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2021.07.017
sha: a6c7b1ba56984eaaa49640dd93d1f9da1268c0d0
doc_id: 976873
cord_uid: hhmnd0tl

nan

COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed several national healthcare systems; hospital overcrowding and increase of Intensive Care Units' (ICUs) bed occupancy rate up to saturation explain the great need for a close monitoring for worsening of respiratory status and identifying high-risk patients.

In pre-COVID era, early warning scores (EWS) have been strongly recommended in acute hospital settings to detect patients at risk of clinical deterioration. NEWS, that is immediately available and does not require laboratory data, was validated as the more reliable score in acute settings (e.g. in Emergency Departments, EDs and Acute Medical Units, AMUs) especially to predict in-hospital mortality and ICUs admissions.

A modified version of NEWS (NEWS-C), including age in addition to vital signs, was proposed but not validated to predict adverse events in COVID-19 patients [1,2].

Covino et al. outlined in this journal that the accuracy of NEWS-C was lower than that of NEWS considering ICUs transfers and deaths at 48 hours and 7 days after Emergency Department admission [3] . SU et al., instead, reported that NEWS-C was the most accurate scoring system among common EWS for predicting early deterioration of respiratory function and need of intensive respiratory support in COVID-19 patients [4] . Finally, in a previous letter to this editor Peng et al. concluded that the ability of NEWS-C to predict deterioration in COVID-19 patients was as good as NEWS [5] .

The relatively small studies' populations could explain these apparently controversial results. 

Swiss Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Recommendations for the admission of patients with COVID-19 to intensive care and intermediate care units (ICUs and IMCUs)

Predicting intensive care unit admission and death for COVID-19 patients in the emergency department using early warning scores

Prognostic accuracy of early warning scores for clinical deterioration in patients with COVID-19

NEWS can predict deterioration of patients with COVID-19. Letter to Editor

The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest.This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.