Performance of the Manchester Triage System in Adult Medical Emergency Patients: A Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Background: Accurate initial patient triage in the emergency department (ED) is pivotal in reducing time to effective treatment by the medical team and in expediting patient flow. The Manchester Triage System (MTS) is widely implemented for this purpose. Yet the overall effectiveness of its performance remains unclear.

Objectives: We investigated the ability of MTS to accurately assess high treatment priority and to predict adverse clinical outcomes in a large unselected population of medical ED patients.

Methods: We prospectively followed consecutive medical patients seeking ED care for 30 days. Triage nurses implemented MTS upon arrival of patients admitted to the ED. The primary endpoint was high initial treatment priority adjudicated by two independent physicians. Secondary endpoints were 30-day all-cause mortality, admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), and length of stay. We used regression models with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) as a measure of discrimination.

Results: Of the 2407 patients, 524 (21.8%) included patients (60.5 years, 55.7% males) who were classified as high treatment priority; 3.9% (n = 93) were transferred to the ICU; and 5.7% (n = 136) died. The initial MTS showed fair prognostic accuracy in predicting treatment priority (AUC 0.71) and ICU admission (AUC 0.68), but not in predicting mortality (AUC 0.55). Results were robust across most predefined subgroups, including patients diagnosed with infections, or cardiovascular or gastrointestinal diseases. In the subgroup of neurological symptoms and disorders, the MTS showed the best performance.

Conclusion: The MTS showed fair performance in predicting high treatment priority and adverse clinical outcomes across different medical ED patient populations. Future research should focus on further refinement of the MTS so that its performance can be improved.

Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT01768494.

Keywords: Manchester triage system; emergency department; injury severity; mortality; triage.