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Descripción: Small application for pocketPC that simplifies calculation of the
POSSUM and P-POSSUM scores. Included: POSSUM morbidity, POSSUM
mortality, P-POSSUM mortality and a handy little GCS score calculator.
The interface is very intuitive, and the dropdown menus should make
data entry easy.
Thanks to Dr. A.J. Fox for beta-testing and advice.
What is the POSSUM and P-POSSUM score?
POSSUM stands for Physiologic and Operative
Severity Score for the enUmeration
of Mortaility and Morbidity. It was
developed by Copeland et al in 1991 and has since been applied to a
number of surgical groups including orthopaedic, vascular, head and
neck and GI/colorectal surgery patients.
Anaesthetists are generally less aware (than surgeons) of POSSUM than
other scoring systems e.g. ASA for general risk prediction and APACHE
for critically ill patients on ITU. ASA is too simplistic and highly
subjective and APACHE too complex for general use. POSSUM lies
somewhere between these two systems, closer to APACHE and requires
only 12 physiologic and 6 operative parameters for its calculation.
POSSUM can even be used to give an estimate of risk providing
those clinicians handling the data understand the implications.
P-POSSUM or Portsmouth POSSUM was a modification of the original
equation (Whiteley et al 1998) that attempted to counteract the
overprediction of mortality in low risk patients. It uses the same
variables and may still overpredict mortality in low risk groups but
is a better 'fit' than POSSUM. |
