Clinical examination has reasonable discriminative value for assessing 90-day mortality in acutely admitted ICU patients. In our study population, a single, protocolized clinical examination had similar prognostic abilities compared with the SAPS-II and APACHE-IV and outperformed the SOFA score.

A total of 1,075 patients were included, of whom 298 patients (28%) had died at 90-day follow-up. Multivariable analyses adjusted for age and norepinephrine infusion rate demonstrated that the combination of higher respiratory rate, higher systolic blood pressure, lower central temperature, altered consciousness, and decreased urine output was independently associated with 90-day mortality.

Independent predictors of 90-day mortality were identified using multivariable logistic regression analyses. Model performance was compared with established prognostic risk scores using area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC).

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