The revised Atlanta classification quantifies severity as:1
- Mild – absence of organ failure or complications
- Moderate – transient organ failure or local/systemic complications without persistent organ failure
- Severe – persistent >48 hours organ failure.
There are many other scoring systems available designed to predict complications or disease course. They have a low specificity and low positive predictive value and are therefore not sufficiently reliable to deviate from generic risk predictors such as EWS/APACHE II.2
