ArticleEmergency medicine journal : EMJ2022
Comparing complaint-based triage scales and early warning scores for emergency department triage.
Article in Emergency medicine journal : EMJ, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Concordance between an artificial intelligence self-triage programme and physical triage.Emergency medicine journal : EMJ · 2026Observational
- High- and Low-Complexity Features of Non-Critical Adult Patients in the Emergency Department.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Unsupervised Clustering of 41,728 Emergency Department Visits: Insights into Patient Profiles and KTAS Reliability.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Emergency Department Utilization and Patient Acuity in the Setting of Care-Seeking Hesitancy: Insights from the COVID-19 Pandemic.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Patient Triage and Guidance in Emergency Departments Using Large Language Models: Multimetric Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Adult Triage in the Emergency Department: Introducing a Multi-Layer Triage System.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Comparing the National Early Warning Score and the Manchester Triage System in Emergency Department Triage: A Multi-Outcome Performance Evaluation.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Optimal timing for the Modified Early Warning Score for prediction of short-term critical illness in the acute care chain: a prospective observational study.Emergency medicine journal : EMJ · 2024Observational
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEmergency triage systems are used globally to prioritise care based on patients' needs. These systems are commonly based on patient complaints, while the need for timely interventions on regular hospital wards is usually assessed with early warning scores (EWS). We aim to directly compare the ability of currently used triage scales and EWS scores to recognise patients in need of urgent care in the ED.
methodsWe performed a retrospective, single-centre study on all patients who presented to the ED of a Dutch Level 1 trauma centre, between 1 September 2018 and 24 June 2020 and for whom a Netherlands Triage System (NTS) score as well as a Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) was recorded. The performance of these scores was assessed using surrogate markers for true urgency and presented using bar charts, cross tables and a paired area under the curve (AUC).
resultsWe identified 12 317 unique patient visits where NTS and MEWS scores were documented during triage. A paired comparison of the AUC of these scores showed that the MEWS score had a significantly better AUC than the NTS for predicting the need for hospital admission (0.65 vs 0.60; p<0.001) or 30-day all-cause mortality (0.70 vs 0.60; p<0.001). Furthermore, when non-urgent MEWS scores co-occur with urgent NTS scores, the MEWS score seems to more accurately capture the urgency level that is warranted.
conclusionsThe results of this study suggest that EWSs could potentially be used to replace the current emergency triage systems.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.