Improving the prioritization of children at the emergency department: Updating the Manchester Triage System using vital signs (original) (raw)

Background Vital signs are used in emergency care settings in the first assessment of children to identify those that need immediate attention. We aimed to develop and validate vital sign based Manchester Triage System (MTS) discriminators to improve triage of children at the emergency department. Methods and findings The TrIAGE project is a prospective observational study based on electronic health record data from five European EDs (Netherlands (n = 2), United Kingdom, Austria, and Portugal). In the current study, we included 117,438 consecutive children <16 years presenting to the ED during the study period (2012–2015). We derived new discriminators based on heart rate, respiratory rate, and/or capillary refill time for specific subgroups of MTS flowcharts. Moreover, we determined the optimal cut-off value for each vital sign. The main outcome measure was a previously developed 3-category reference standard (high, intermediate, low urgency) for the required urgency of care, ba...