Objective: To investigate the role of Pediatric Critical Illness Score (PCIS) in evaluating the prognosis and severity of severe hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD).
Methods: This study included 424 children with severe HFMD, consisting of 390 survivors and 34 deceased patients. Related physiological parameters and clinical data were collected for calculating PCIS scores. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was employed to assess the performance of PCIS in evaluating the complications and outcomes.
Results: The median of PCIS scores for survivors was higher than that for deceased patients (P<0.01). Of the 424 children with severe HFMD, only 26 (6.1%) had critical illness according to the severity assessment using PCIS. The AUC (95%CI) of PCIS was 0.74 (0.66, 0.82) in predicting pulmonary edema, 0.82 (0.74, 0.90) in predicting pulmonary hemorrhage, and 0.83 (0.75, 0.92) in predicting death.
Conclusions: PCIS can predict the complications and prognosis in children with severe HFMD. However, the existing scoring system of PCIS cannot fully assess the severity of HFMD.