Validation of "Signs of Inflammation in Children that Kill" (SICK) score for immediate non-invasive assessment of severity of illness.

Objective: To validate the SICK scoring system's ability to differentiate between individuals with higher and lower probabilities of death

Method: We performed a one year two-centre prospective evaluation of all children aged between one month and 12 years referred to the Paediatric team at St Stephens Hospital in Delhi and admitted to the Paediatric Department at West Middlesex University Hospital in London. We calculated SICK scores at presentation and correlated them with subsequent in-hospital mortality. We used discrimination by areas under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves to measure performance.