• Gensheng Zhang, Kai Zhang, Xie Zheng, Wei Cui, Yucai Hong, and Zhongheng Zhang.
• Department of Critical Care Medicine, Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
• Emerg Med J. 2020 Apr 1; 37 (4): 232-239.

ObjectivesTo carry out a meta-analysis to examine the prognostic performance of the Mortality in Emergency Department Sepsis (MEDS) score in predicting mortality among emergency department patients with a suspected infection.MethodsElectronic databases-PubMed, Embase, Scopus, EBSCO and the Cochrane Library-were searched for eligible articles from their respective inception through February 2019. Sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios and receiver operator characteristic area under the curve were calculated. Subgroup analyses were performed to explore the prognostic performance of MEDS in selected populations.ResultsWe identified 24 studies involving 21 246 participants. The pooled sensitivity of MEDS to predict mortality was 79% (95% CI 72% to 84%); specificity was 74% (95% CI 68% to 80%); positive likelihood ratio 3.07 (95% CI 2.47 to 3.82); negative likelihood ratio 0.29 (95% CI 0.22 to 0.37) and area under the curve 0.83 (95% CI 0.80 to 0.86). Significant heterogeneity was seen among included studies. Meta-regression analyses showed that the time at which the MEDS score was measured and the cut-off value used were important sources of heterogeneity.ConclusionThe MEDS score has moderate accuracy in predicting mortality among emergency department patients with a suspected infection. A study comparison MEDS and qSOFA in the same population is needed.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

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