Comparison of Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) score and the conventional scores in predicting outcome in aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage patients

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) score is a more comprehensive score used to assess eye response, motor response, brainstem reflexes, and respiration that was introduced to overcome the drawbacks of Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score. Our aim was to assess which score best predicts mortality and poor outcome in aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (aSAH) patients. METHODS: This cohort study, prospectively evaluated the use of FOUR score to assess the mortality and outcome in aSAH patients during the period from November 2015 to November 2016. For each patient of aSAH, GCS, FOUR score, Hunt and Hess (HH) score and World Federation of Neurological Surgeons (WFNS) score were determined at the time of admission to neurosurgical intensive care unit. All patients were followed till 28 days post-SAH and their outcome were assessed by Glasgow outcome scale (GOS). We calculated the sensitivity (Sn) and specificity (Sp) for each of these scores. We generated the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), quantified the accuracy by the area under curve (AUC), and also calculated their 95% confidence interval (95% CI). RESULTS: A total of 75 aSAH patients were enrolled for the study. The mortality was 24/75 (32%) with 23 in-hospital deaths. FOUR score was highly specific (86.27%) and sensitive (75%) for the prediction of mortality. However, for predicting 28-day outcome, WFNS and HH grade were most specific (92.5%), whereas FOUR and HH score was moderately specific (68.57%). CONCLUSION: FOUR score is among the most specific and moderately sensitive tool for prediction of mortality. However, WFNS and HH grade are more specific in predicting the 28-day outcome.