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. 2023 Jun 14;18(6):e0287091.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287091. eCollection 2023.

LMIC-PRIEST: Derivation and validation of a clinical severity score for acutely ill adults with suspected COVID-19 in a middle-income setting

Carl Marincowitz  1 , Peter Hodkinson  2 , David McAlpine  2 , Gordon Fuller  1 , Steve Goodacre  1 , Peter A Bath  1   3 , Laura Sbaffi  3 , Madina Hasan  1 , Yasein Omer  3 , Lee Wallis  3
Affiliations

LMIC-PRIEST: Derivation and validation of a clinical severity score for acutely ill adults with suspected COVID-19 in a middle-income setting

Carl Marincowitz et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Uneven vaccination and less resilient health care systems mean hospitals in LMICs are at risk of being overwhelmed during periods of increased COVID-19 infection. Risk-scores proposed for rapid triage of need for admission from the emergency department (ED) have been developed in higher-income settings during initial waves of the pandemic.

Methods: Routinely collected data for public hospitals in the Western Cape, South Africa from the 27th August 2020 to 11th March 2022 were used to derive a cohort of 446,084 ED patients with suspected COVID-19. The primary outcome was death or ICU admission at 30 days. The cohort was divided into derivation and Omicron variant validation sets. We developed the LMIC-PRIEST score based on the coefficients from multivariable analysis in the derivation cohort and existing triage practices. We externally validated accuracy in the Omicron period and a UK cohort.

Results: We analysed 305,564 derivation, 140,520 Omicron and 12,610 UK validation cases. Over 100 events per predictor parameter were modelled. Multivariable analyses identified eight predictor variables retained across models. We used these findings and clinical judgement to develop a score based on South African Triage Early Warning Scores and also included age, sex, oxygen saturation, inspired oxygen, diabetes and heart disease. The LMIC-PRIEST score achieved C-statistics: 0.82 (95% CI: 0.82 to 0.83) development cohort; 0.79 (95% CI: 0.78 to 0.80) Omicron cohort; and 0.79 (95% CI: 0.79 to 0.80) UK cohort. Differences in prevalence of outcomes led to imperfect calibration in external validation. However, use of the score at thresholds of three or less would allow identification of very low-risk patients (NPV ≥0.99) who could be rapidly discharged using information collected at initial assessment.

Conclusion: The LMIC-PRIEST score shows good discrimination and high sensitivity at lower thresholds and can be used to rapidly identify low-risk patients in LMIC ED settings.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Flow diagram of study population selection Western Cape, South Africa.
Fig 2
Fig 2. ROC curves for predicting primary outcome for LMIC-PRIEST score.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Calibration curves for LMIC-PRIEST score performance in external validation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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