94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Neonatology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1546408
Utility of the neonatal and pediatric sequential organ failure assessment scores in critically ill term neonates
Provisionally accepted- University of Florida, Gainesville, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The pediatric Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (pSOFA) and neonatal SOFA (nSOFA) are used to assess organ dysfunction and predict mortality in critically-ill children and neonates. The utility of these scores in term neonates admitted to pediatric (PICU/PCICU) and neonatal intensive care units (NICU) is unknown.Methods: Single-center retrospective cohort study of electronic health records of 4403 and 379 term neonates admitted to NICU and PICU/PCICU. Hourly pSOFA and nSOFA scores were calculated. In-hospital mortality was the primary outcome. Area under receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC) for mortality was calculated.Results: Both scores predicted mortality in both settings (AUROC range 0.79-0.95). The pSOFA showed a larger difference between survivors and non-survivors in the PICU/PCICU cohort, while nSOFA captured critical mortality risk factors in neonates across both settings.Conclusions: Both pSOFA and nSOFA predicted mortality with good to very good discrimination in criticallyill term neonates admitted to PICU/PCICU and NICU settings.
Keywords: nSOFA, pSOFA, NICu, PICu, Organ dysfunction, Pediatric cardiac ICU, Term neonate, Term neonates
Received: 16 Dec 2024; Accepted: 15 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 De La Cruz, Nicolas and Wynn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Diomel De La Cruz, University of Florida, Gainesville, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.