Predictive performance of comorbidity for 30-day and 1-year mortality in patients with bloodstream infection visiting the emergency department: a retrospective cohort study

OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) predicted short-term and long-term mortality in patients with a bloodstream infection visiting the emergency department (ED) and compare it to the often-validated National Early Warning Score (NEWS).

DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study.

SETTING: A tertiary hospital in the Netherlands.

PARTICIPANTS: Adult patients attending the ED with a blood culture-proven infection between 2012 and 2017 were included. We collected the comorbidities from the CCI and the vital signs from the NEWS.

MAIN OUTCOMES: Short-term mortality (30-day) and long-term mortality (1 year). We assessed the predictive performance by discrimination, expressed as the area under the curve (AUC).

RESULTS: We included 1039 patients with a blood culture-proven infection. Mortality was 10.4% within 30 days and 27.8% within 1 year. On average patients had two comorbidities (ranging from 0 to 6). Highly prevalent comorbidities were malignancy (30.2%) and diabetes mellitus (20.5%). The predictive performance of the CCI was highest for 1-year mortality (AUC 0.696 (95%CI) (0.660 to 0.732)) and better compared with the NEWS (AUC (95% CI) 0.594 (0.555 to 0.632)). For prediction of 30-day mortality, the NEWS was superior (AUC (95% CI) 0.706 (0.656 to 0.756)) to the comorbidities of the CCI (AUC (95% CI) 0.568 (0.507 to 0.628)).

CONCLUSIONS: We found that presenting comorbidity (ie, the CCI) is most useful to prognosticate long-term outcome in patients with bloodstream infection in the ED. Short-term mortality is more accurately predicted by deviating vital signs (ie, the NEWS).