Routine ICU admission after brain tumor surgery: retrospective validation and critical appraisal of two prediction scores

BACKGROUND: Routine admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) following brain tumor surgery has been a common practice for many years. Although this practice has been challenged by many authors, it has still not changed widely, mainly due to the lack of reliable data for preoperative risk assessment. Motivated by this dilemma, risk prediction scores for postoperative complications following brain tumor surgery have been developed recently. In order to improve the ICU admission policy at our institution, we assessed the applicability, performance, and safety of the two most appropriate risk prediction scores. METHODS: One thousand consecutive adult patients undergoing elective brain tumor resection within 19 months were included. Patients with craniotomy for other causes, i.e., cerebral aneurysms and microvascular decompression, were excluded. The decision for postoperative ICU-surveillance was made by joint judgment of the operating surgeon and the anesthesiologist. All data and features relevant to the scores were extracted from clinical records and subsequent ICU or neurosurgical floor documentation was inspected for any postoperative adverse events requiring ICU admission. The CranioScore derived by Cinotti et al. (Anesthesiology 129(6):1111–20, 5) and the risk assessment score of Munari et al. (Acta Neurochir (Wien) 164(3):635–641, 15) were calculated and prognostic performance was evaluated by ROC analysis. RESULTS: In our cohort, both scores showed only a weak prognostic performance: the CranioScore reached a ROC-AUC of 0.65, while Munari et al.’s score achieved a ROC-AUC of 0.67. When applying the recommended decision thresholds for ICU admission, 64% resp. 68% of patients would be classified as in need of ICU surveillance, and the negative predictive value (NPV) would be 91% for both scores. Lowering the thresholds in order to increase patient safety, i.e., 95% NPV, would lead to ICU admission rates of over 85%. CONCLUSION: Performance of both scores was limited in our cohort. In practice, neither would achieve a significant reduction in ICU admission rates, whereas the number of patients suffering complications at the neurosurgical ward would increase. In future, better risk assessment measures are needed. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00701-023-05592-9.