Full Outline of Unresponsiveness score and the Glasgow Coma Scale in prediction of pediatric coma.

Background: This study was done to compare the admission Full Outline of Unresponsiveness (FOUR) score and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) as predictors of outcome in children with impaired consciousness.

Methods: In this observational study, children (5-12 years) with impaired consciousness of <7 days were included. Children with traumatic brain injury, on sedatives or neuromuscular blockade; with pre-existing cerebral palsy, mental retardation, degenerative brain disease, vision/hearing impairment; and seizure within last 1 hour were excluded. Primary outcomes: comparison of area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcomes: comparison of AUC of ROC curve for mortality and poor outcome on Pediatric Overall Performance Category Scale at 3 months.

Results: Of the 63 children, 20 died during hospital stay. AUC for in-hospital mortality for GCS was 0.83 ( 0.7 to 0.9) and FOUR score was 0.8 ( 0.7 to 0.9) [difference between areas -0.0250 (95% 0.0192 to 0.0692), Z statistic 1.109, =0.2674]. AUC for mortality at 3 months for GCS was 0.78 ( 0.67 to 0.90) and FOUR score was 0.74 ( 0.62 to 0.87) (=0.1102) and AUC for poor functional outcome for GCS was 0.82 ( 0.72 to 0.93) and FOUR score was 0.79 ( 0.68 to 0.9) (=0.2377), which were also comparable. Inter-rater reliability for GCS was 0.96 and for FOUR score 0.98.

Conclusion: FOUR score was as good as GCS in prediction of in-hospital and 3-month mortality and functional outcome at 3 months. FOUR score had a good inter-rater reliability.