External Validation of the qSOFA Score in Emergency Department Patients With Pneumonia.

Background: Pneumonia is the leading cause of sepsis. In 2016, the 3 International Consensus Conference for Sepsis released the Quick Sepsis-Related Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) to identify risk for poor outcomes in sepsis.

Objective: We sought to externally validate qSOFA in emergency department (ED) patients with pneumonia and compare the accuracy of qSOFA to systemic inflammatory response syndrome score (SIRS), Confusion, Respiratory Rate and Blood Pressure (CRB), Confusion, Respiratory Rate, Blood Pressure and Age (CRB-65), and DS CRB-65, which is based on the CRB-65 score and includes two additional items-presence of underlying comorbid disease and blood oxygen saturation.