The vasoactive inotropic score (VIS) is calculated as a weighted sum of all administered vasopressor and inotropic medications and quantifies the amount of pharmacological cardiovascular support in patients with the most severe combined cardiopulmonary failure supported with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). This study evaluated (1) whether VIS prior to the initiation of ECMO is an independent predictor of survival in these patients and (2) whether VIS might guide the selection of the appropriate extracorporeal cannulation modality (Veno-Venous ‘V-V’ or Veno-VenoArterial ‘V-VA’). In this study, 39 V-VA and 182 V-V ECMO runs were retrospectively analyzed. VIS immediately prior to ECMO initiation (pre-ECMO) was 40 (10/113) in all patients, 30 (10/80) in patients with V-V ECMO and 207 (60/328) in patients with V-VA ECMO. Pre-ECMO VIS was an independent predictor of survival in univariate (AUC = 0.68, p = 0.001) and multi-variable analyses (p = 0.02). Pre-ECMO VIS was clearly associated with mortality (p = 0.001) in V-V ECMO group; however, V-VA ECMO disrupted this association (p = 0.18). Therefore, in conjunction with echocardiography, VIS might assist in selecting the appropriate ECMO cannulation strategy as patients with a pre-ECMO VIS ≥ 61.4 had significantly lower odds of survival compared to those with lower VIS.

Background Sepsis-3 definition uses SOFA score to discriminate sepsis from uncomplicated infection, replacing SIRS criteria that were criticized for being inaccurate. Eligibility of sepsis-3 criteria for sepsis diagnosis and the applied validation methodology using mortality as endpoint are topic of ongoing debate. We assessed the impact of different criteria on sepsis diagnosis in our ICU and devised a mathematical approach for mortality-based validation of sepsis criteria. As infectious status is often unclear at clinical deterioration, we integrated non-infected patients into analysis. Methods Suspected infection, SOFA and SIRS were captured for an ICU cohort of a university center over one year. For raw scores (SIRS/SOFA) and sepsis criteria (SIRS�2/SOFA�2/ SOFA_change�2) frequencies and associations with in-hospital mortality were assessed. Using a mathematical approach, we estimated the correlation between sepsis and in-hospital mortality serving as reference for evaluation of observed mortality correlations of sepsis criteria. Results Of 791 patients, 369 (47%) were infected and 422 (53%) non-infected, with an in-hospital mortality of 39% and 15%. SIRS�2 indicated sepsis in 90% of infected patients, SOFA�2 in 99% and SOFA_change�2 in 77%. In non-infected patients, SIRS, SOFA and SOFA_ change were �2 in 78%, 88% and 58%. In AUROC analyses neither SOFA nor SIRS