Organ dysfunction scores in critical illness

Scoring systems to describe organ dysfunction or predict survival are widely used in critically ill patients. Such scores can facilitate description of patient populations, for example for inclusion in clinical trials, and to enable comparison between intensive care units (ICUs) or within the same ICU over time. While early systems focused primarily on survival prediction or the presence or absence of organ failure, recent years have seen the development of newer models able to describe the evolution of individual and multiple organ dysfunction. This review will discuss the development and application of such systems in the ICU.