Development and validation of a decision tree early warning score based on routine laboratory test results for the discrimination of hospital mortality in emergency medical admissions

Aim of studyTo build an early warning score (EWS) based exclusively on routinely undertaken laboratory tests that might provide early discrimination of in-hospital death and could be easily implemented on paper.Materials and methodsUsing a database of combined haematology and biochemistry results for 86,472 discharged adult patients for whom the admission specialty was Medicine, we used decision tree (DT) analysis to generate a laboratory decision tree early warning score (LDT-EWS) for each gender. LDT-EWS was developed for a single set (n = 3496) (Q1) and validated in 22 other discrete sets each of three months long (Q2, Q3…Q23) (total n = 82,976; range of n = 3428 to 4093) by testing its ability to discriminate in-hospital death using the area under the receiver-operating characteristic (AUROC) curve.ResultsThe data generated slightly different models for male and female patients. The ranges of AUROC values (95% CI) for LDT-EWS with in-hospital death as the outcome for the validation sets Q2-Q23 were: 0.755 (0.727-0.783) (Q16) to 0.801 (0.776-0.826) [all patients combined, n = 82,976]; 0.744 (0.704-0.784, Q16) to 0.824 (0.792-0.856, Q2) [39,591 males]; and 0.742 (0.707-0.777, Q10) to 0.826 (0.796-0.856, Q12) [43,385 females].ConclusionsThis study provides evidence that the results of commonly measured laboratory tests collected soon after hospital admission can be represented in a simple, paper-based EWS (LDT-EWS) to discriminate in-hospital mortality. We hypothesise that, with appropriate modification, it might be possible to extend the use of LDT-EWS throughout the patient's hospital stay.