Predictive value of the unplanned extubation risk assessment scale in hospitalized patients with tubes

BACKGROUND: Critical patients often had various types of tubes, unplanned extubation of any kind of tube may cause serious injury to the patient, but previous reports mainly focused on endotracheal intubation. The limitations or incorrect use of the unplanned extubation risk assessment tool may lead to improper identification of patients at a high risk of unplanned extubation and cause delay or non-implementation of unplanned extubation prevention interventions. To effectively identify and manage the risk of unplanned extubation, a comprehensive and universal unplanned extubation risk assessment tool is needed. AIM: To assess the predictive value of the Huaxi Unplanned Extubation Risk Assessment Scale in inpatients. METHODS: This was a retrospective validation study. In this study, medical records were extracted between October 2020 and September 2021 from a tertiary comprehensive hospital in southwest China. For patients with tubes during hospitalization, the following information was extracted from the hospital information system: age, sex, admission mode, education, marital status, number of tubes, discharge mode, unplanned extubation occurrence, and the Huaxi Unplanned Extubation Risk Assessment Scale (HUERAS) score. Only inpatients were included, and those with indwelling needles were excluded. The best cut-off value and the area under the curve (AUC) of the Huaxi Unplanned Extubation Risk Assessment Scale were been identified. RESULTS: A total of 76033 inpatients with indwelling tubes were included in this study, and 26 unplanned extubations occurred. The patients’ HUERAS scores were between 11 and 30, with an average score of 17.25 ± 3.73. The scores of patients with or without unplanned extubation were 22.85 ± 3.28 and 17.25 ± 3.73, respectively (P < 0.001). The results of the correlation analysis showed that the correlation coefficients between each characteristic and the total score ranged from 0.183 to 0.843. The best cut-off value was 21, and there were 14135 patients with a high risk of unplanned extubation, accounting for 18.59%. The Cronbach’s α, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of the Huaxi Unplanned Extubation Risk Assessment Scale were 0.815, 84.62%, 81.43%, 0.16%, and 99.99%, respectively. The AUC of HUERAS was 0.851 (95%CI: 0.783-0.919, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The HUERAS has good reliability and predictive validity. It can effectively identify inpatients at a high risk of unplanned extubation and help clinical nurses carry out risk screening and management.