Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- SECTION 1 Admission to Critical Care
- 1 Who needs cardiothoracic critical care?
- 2 Scoring systems and prognosis
- 3 Admission to critical care: The cardiology patient
- 4 Admission to critical care: Heart failure
- 5 Admission to critical care: The respiratory patient
- 6 Resuscitation after cardiac surgery
- 7 Transport of the cardiac critical care patient
- SECTION 2 General Considerations in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 3 System Management in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 4 Procedure-Specific Care in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 5 Discharge and Follow-up From Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 6 Structure and Organisation in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 7 Ethics, Legal Issues and Research in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- Appendix Works Cited
- Index
2 - Scoring systems and prognosis
from SECTION 1 - Admission to Critical Care
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- SECTION 1 Admission to Critical Care
- 1 Who needs cardiothoracic critical care?
- 2 Scoring systems and prognosis
- 3 Admission to critical care: The cardiology patient
- 4 Admission to critical care: Heart failure
- 5 Admission to critical care: The respiratory patient
- 6 Resuscitation after cardiac surgery
- 7 Transport of the cardiac critical care patient
- SECTION 2 General Considerations in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 3 System Management in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 4 Procedure-Specific Care in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 5 Discharge and Follow-up From Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 6 Structure and Organisation in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- SECTION 7 Ethics, Legal Issues and Research in Cardiothoracic Critical Care
- Appendix Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Crystal balls
Knowing the likelihood of survival after cardiac surgery is useful. If we know the likely outcome, we can compare it with actual outcome and thus gain some insight into the overall performance of the cardiac surgical unit. Knowledge of who is likely to develop major morbidity also has an impact on the use of valuable resources and may allow for sensible planning of operating lists. In addition, some believe that being able to predict mortality with some certitude may help clinicians to determine when further efforts are futile. Unfortunately, the perfect predictor – a crystal ball to foresee the future – has not yet been fully developed.
Risk models or scoring systems
Scoring systems allow reasonable prediction of outcome after cardiac surgery. Many models have been devised to work out the likelihood of survival, and these and others have also been shown to predict major morbidity, long-term survival and resource use with some accuracy. Models can be broadly divided into two groups:
• preoperative models, applied before the operation, with no knowledge of intraoperative events; and
• postoperative models, applied immediately after the operation on admission into the critical care unit, taking some account of what the operation did to the patient.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Core Topics in Cardiothoracic Critical Care , pp. 7 - 12Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008