The importance of standardized international scores for intensive care

A new article advocates for the creation of a global scoring system to measure the severity of illness in ICU patients

2025-11-18

(Press-News.org) Assessing the severity of illness in critically ill patients is a crucial task in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) worldwide. However, current systems are often based on local realities and can fail when applied to international contexts. An article published in the journal Critical Care Science, co-authored by researchers from the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), argues that an international scoring system is urgently needed for intensive care medicine research and for the advancement of global public health.

Speaking the Same Language in the ICU

Severity scores are clinical tools that compile data on a patient's health status to estimate their risk of death and guide medical decisions. They also help compare performance between ICUs, plan resources, and evaluate the results of clinical studies. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, these scores were widely used to describe patient profiles, assess the impact of treatments, and monitor the quality of care across different countries.

However, most of these systems were developed based on populations in high or middle-income countries, which limits their usefulness in more diverse contexts. Factors like the prevalence of specific diseases, life expectancy, and the availability of lab tests vary significantly across different regions of the world. This creates major distortions when these scores are applied globally.

Challenges of Cross-Country Comparison

The article highlights that scores like SAPS 3 and APACHE IV, which are widely used in wealthy countries, may perform poorly in locations with less access to lab tests or different epidemiological realities.

Additionally, many of these scores require clinical and laboratory variables that aren't available everywhere. This results in data gaps in low-income countries where ICUs are marked by a scarcity of resources. The problem is made worse by the lack of standardization in how this missing data is reported.

A Proposal for a Global Solution

According to the authors, the answer lies in building a simplified international score based on a minimal dataset that is common to ICUs worldwide. This data must be easy to collect, available in routine clinical practice, and, ideally, independent of difficult-to-access technologies or tests.

The goal of creating a global system isn't to replace local scores, which will continue to be useful for national research and policies. Instead, it would provide a common foundation for comparison between different countries. This shared language for intensive care medicine would benefit not only science but also the management of public health crises like pandemics and natural disasters.

This standardization would make it easier to monitor the severity of infectious diseases and help predict the demand for ICU beds. It would also improve the representativeness of clinical studies since it would be possible to compare populations from different countries and reveal inequalities, generating data for the creation of more effective policies.

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Almost half of Oregon elk population carries advantageous genetic variant against CWD, study shows

2025-11-18

URBANA, Ill. – Chronic Wasting Disease, a prion protein disease that is fatal in elk, deer, and other cervids, has spread rapidly across the United States since it was first identified in 1967. CWD has now reached Idaho near the Oregon border, causing concern for the Columbian white-tailed deer, a rare subspecies found only in two regions in Oregon. The deer have little genetic protection against CWD, but a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows that about half of Oregon elk carry a gene that makes them less susceptible to ...

Colorectal cancer screenings remain low for people ages 45 to 49 despite guideline change

2025-11-18

UCLA research finds that fewer than 1 in 4 eligible younger adults completed colorectal cancer screenings after the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) lowered the recommended screening age to 45 from 50. The researchers had suspected that unmet social needs such as insecure access to housing, transportation, or food may have played a role in suboptimal screening rates, but their investigation found no significant differences in testing uptake for this early midlife cohort after controlling for sociodemographic and clinical covariates, leaving the barriers ...

Artificial Intelligence may help save lives in ICUs

2025-11-18

A study published in the Journal of Critical Care, conducted with the participation of the D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), investigated how to measure efficiency in the use of resources for patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), an illness contracted outside hospital settings and most common among older adults. Severe CAP represents one of the greatest challenges for ICUs. It requires complex resources, ranging from prolonged hospitalizations to respiratory support, directly affecting hospitals’ ability to deliver quality care. Despite its ...

Uncovering how cells build tissues and organs

2025-11-18

Growing from a single cell into a complex organism with specialized tissues and organs requires a complex and coordinated process. But the mechanical signals that guide tissue and organ development—cells pushing, pulling, compressing, and swelling against one another and their environment—remain mysterious. Researchers from the University of Rochester’s Department of Biomedical Engineering will shed new light on tissue and organ development by studying how cells interact mechanically with the extracellular matrix, a biological polymer produced by cells that acts like scaffolding for building more complicated structures. Assistant Professor Marisol ...

Bigger datasets aren’t always better

2025-11-18

Cambridge, MA -- Determining the least expensive path for a new subway line underneath a metropolis like New York City is a colossal planning challenge — involving thousands of potential routes through hundreds of city blocks, each with uncertain construction costs. Conventional wisdom suggests extensive field studies across many locations would be needed to determine the costs associated with digging below certain city blocks. Because these studies are costly to conduct, a city planner would want to perform as few as possible while still gathering the most useful data for making an optimal decision. With ...

AI at the heart of new SFU gel-free ECG system for faster diagnoses

2025-11-18

A new heart monitoring system combining 3D printing and artificial intelligence could transform the way doctors measure and diagnose patients' heart health. Developed at SFU’s School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering, the system features reusable dry 3D-printed electrodes embedded in a soft chest belt – the folding origami-shaped design uses gentle suction to stick to the skin. Carbon-based ink printed on the suction cup replaces electrolyte gel, conducting the heart’s electrical signals through to a wearable ...

“Cellular Big Brother”: 3D model with human cells allows real-time observation of brain metastases and paves the way for new treatments

2025-11-18

Using human cells and cutting-edge technology, the team created a three-dimensional (3D) model that accurately simulates the brain invaded by aggressive cancer. Published in Biofabrication, the study combines frontier science, advanced technology, and international collaboration — while also carrying a personal story: part of the team is formed by a couple of scientists who quite literally bring their work home. Brain metastasis occurs when cancer cells migrate from the original tumor — in this case, the skin — to the brain. This stage of the disease is among the most challenging to treat, and it is associated with over 90% of cancer-related deaths. “When melanoma ...

Teaching large language models how to absorb new knowledge

2025-11-18

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In an MIT classroom, a professor lectures while students diligently write down notes they will reread later to study and internalize key information ahead of an exam. Humans know how to learn new information, but large language models can’t do this in the same way. Once a fully trained LLM has been deployed, its “brain” is static and can’t permanently adapt itself to new knowledge. This means that if a user tells an LLM something important today, it won’t remember ...

Milestone on the road to the ‘quantum internet’

2025-11-18

Everyday life on the internet is insecure. Hackers can break into bank accounts or steal digital identities. Driven by AI, attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Quantum cryptography promises more effective protection. It makes communication secure against eavesdropping by relying on the laws of quantum physics. However, the path toward a quantum internet is still fraught with technical hurdles. Researchers at the Institute of Semiconductor Optics and Functional Interfaces (IHFG) at the University of Stuttgart have now made a decisive breakthrough in one of the most technically challenging components, the ‘quantum repeater’. They report their results in Nature Communications ...

Blink to the beat

2025-11-18

Yi Du and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article in the open access journal PLOS Biology on November 18th detailing their findings about a new way our bodies naturally respond to music. Given a steady beat, our eyes blink in synchrony. The neurological process that helps us move with the music is known as auditory-motor synchronization. This describes the way you tap your foot along with the radio or bob your head at a concert, or why some runners listen to songs with a specific number of beats per minute ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Study shows investing in engaging healthcare teams is essential for improving patient experience

New pika research finds troubling signs for the iconic Rocky Mountain animal

Seismic data can identify aircraft by type

Just cutting down doesn’t cut it when it comes to the impact of smoking on your health

Gene silencing may slow down bladder cancer

Most people with a genetic condition that causes significantly high cholesterol go undiagnosed, Mayo Clinic study finds