Critical care resource allocation: trying to PREEDICCT outcomes without a crystal ball

Excerpt

Despite pandemic influenza's long reign atop the list of potential medical catastrophes, the first protocol designed to support critical care triage in a pandemic was published only in 2006 [1]. Additional protocols followed, in attempts to address the goal of developing standardized, transparent and equitable tools for allocating critical care resources to those patients most likely to benefit [2‐7]. Most of these protocols used the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score as the quantitative underpinning for triage decision-making due to its ease of use. These protocols have been shown to generally direct resources to those most likely to benefit [8], in addition to making resources available for surge patients [9]. However, the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score does not always differentiate well between survivors and nonsurvivors of critical illness for some patient populations [10, 11]. …