Agreement between Marshall, Ranson and Apache II as estimators of morbidity and mortality in acute pancreatitis

Abstract

Introduction: Different scales to estimate the risk of morbidity and mortality in patients with pancreatitis are currently in use in Colombia, which leads to uncertainty when classifying and treating these patients.

Objective: This study seeks to analyze agreement between the most used scales to estimate the risk of patient morbidity and mortality in a population treated at 2,670 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l.).

Materials and methods: Two hundred patients between 18 and 65 years old, diagnosed with acute pancreatitis, were evaluated and treated at the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, Bogotá (Colombia). Three risk scales were used for the estimations. Scores ≥ 8 in the APACHE II system, ≥ 2 in the Modified Marshall Score, or 3 or more positive Ranson criteria were classified as pancreatitis with severity prognostic marker. Agreement between the results was determined using the Kappa coefficient.

Results: According to the Marshall score, 45.5% of the cases were pancreatitis with predicted severity, while APACHE II and Ranson yielded scores of 39.5% and 38.5%, respectively. The Kappa coefficient showed weak agreement between APACHE II and Ranson (Kappa=0.201; 95%CI 0.05-0.34), poor agreement between Ranson and Marshall (Kappa=0.18; 95%CI 0.04-0.32), and moderate agreement between APACHE II and Marshall (Kappa=0.42; 95%CI 0.28-0.56).

Conclusions: There is poor agreement between the pancreatitis severity scoring systems used in Colombia, so they cannot be interpreted as clinically equivalent. The data from this study demonstrate the need to validate the scales in Colombia and Latin America. They also suggest that the Marshall scale overestimates the risk in cities above 2,000 m.a.s.l.