Comparison of the performance of the CRUSADE, ACUITY-HORIZONS, and ACTION bleeding scores in ACS patients undergoing PCI: insights from a cohort of 4939 patients in China

BACKGROUND: The CRUSADE, ACTION and ACUITY-HORIZONS scores are commonly used for predicting in-hospital major bleeding events in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), but the homogeneous nature of these models' population limits simple extrapolation to other local population. We aimed to compare the performance of the three risk models in Chinese patients. METHODS: We evaluated the performance of the three predicting scores for predicting in-hospital major bleeding events defined by thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) serious (major and minor) episodes, in a cohort of Chinese ACS patients with either non-ST-elevation ACS (NSTE-ACS) or ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Calibration and discrimination of the three risk models were evaluated by the Hosmer-Lemeshow test and C-statistic, respectively. We compared the predictive accuracy of the risk scores by the Delong non-parametric test. RESULTS: TIMI serious bleeding rate was 1.1% overall (1.9% and 0.86% for STEMI and NSTE-ACS, respectively). The CRUSADE, ACTION and ACUTIY-HORIZONS scores showed an adequate discriminatory capacity for major bleeding: in overall patients, the C-statistic was 0.80, 0.77, and 0.70, respectively; in NSTE-ACS patients, the C-statistic was 0.73, 0.72, and 0.64, respectively; in STEMI patients, the C-statistic was 0.91, 0.92, and 0.75, respectively. The C-statistic for the ACUITY-HORIZONS model was significantly lower than those of the CRUSADE and ACTION scores for the prediction of TIMI serious bleeding in overall patients (compared with CRUSADE, z = 3.83, P = 0.02; compared with ACTION, z = 3.51, P = 0.03); in NSTE-ACS patients (compared with CRUSADE, z = 2.37, P = 0.01; compared with ACTION, z = 2.11, P = 0.04), and in STEMI patients (compared with CRUSADE, z = 2.6.77, P = 0.02; compared with ACTION, z = 7.91, P = 0.002). No differences were observed when the CRUSADE and ACTION models were compared to each other, regardless of overall patients (z = 0.68, P = 0.31) and both of ACS types (NSTE-ACS, z = 0.52, P = 0.60), and STEMI patients (z = 0.36, P = 0.74). However, the three risk scores all overestimated the absolute major bleeding risk in each risk stratification in our study. For example, the predicted rate of CRUSADE score at high risk stratification was 11.9% vs. an actual rate of 5.3%. CONCLUSIONS: The CRUSADE and ACTION scores had a greater calibration and discrimination for in-hospital major bleeding compared with the ACUITY-HORIZONS score in Chinese patients with ACS undergoing PCI. However, they all overestimated the bleeding risk rate for Chinese populations. Calibration of these risk scores would be useful for the generalization in Chinese populations.