Euro SCORE as a Predictor of Extended Intensive Care Unit Stay After Cardiac Surgery

Risk stratification models allow preoperative assessment of individual patients cardiac surgical risk and enable analysis of postoperative outcome in the intensive care unit (ICU) as well.

The aim of this single-center study was to explore the prediction of extended ICU stay after cardiac surgery using the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (Euro SCORE).

A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted. We collected clinical data of 1841 consecutive patients undergoing cardiac surgery. The outcome measure was the duration of ICU stay in days. The predictive performance of Euro SCORE was analyzed by the discriminatory power of a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.

Overall observed mortality was 3.5% (57/1841). Patients had a median ICU stay of 3 days and a mean ICU stay of 3.1 days. Mean additive Euro SCORE was 4.36% (range: 0-21) and logistic Euro SCORE was 4.81% (range: 0.88-44.28). The logistic Euro SCORE model yielded an area under the ROC curve of 0.832, 0.768 and 0.643 for each ICU length of stay, respectively (7, 5, 3 days). Values of Euro SCORE and ICU stay were positively correlated (P < 0.001).

In our center, prolonged length of stay in the ICU correlated positively with Euro SCORE. The overall predictive performance of Euro SCORE is acceptable and provides both surgeons and intensivists with a good estimate of patient risk in terms of ICU stay.