Sequential Organ Failure Assessment for Sepsis

Introduction to SOFA

The Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) is a tool used to evaluate the severity of sepsis by measuring the dysfunction of six organ systems, allowing for monitoring of patient evolution during their stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) 1, 2

The SOFA score evaluates the dysfunction of six organ systems, each with a score of 0 to 4 points, including the respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, renal, hepatic, and coagulation systems 3

The total SOFA score ranges from 0 to 24 points (sum of the six systems) 1
The SOFA was originally developed to sequentially assess the degree of multi-organ failure in critically ill patients with sepsis 1, 4

The SOFA is not suitable for categorizing patients with low-moderate severity without sepsis or organ failure in the first 24 hours of hospital admission 5, 6
The SOFA does not consider the patient's age or comorbidities, unlike the APACHE II score 5, 6
The area under the ROC curve of the SOFA for discriminating mortality is approximately 0.75, indicating acceptable predictive ability 5, 6
The SOFA has lower predictive value than the APACHE II for mortality in patients with complicated intra-abdominal infections (AUC 0.75 vs 0.81) 5, 6

The SOFA allows for sequential monitoring of the patient's condition during their entire ICU stay 1, 2
Regularly repeated scoring enables monitoring of disease progression 1, 2