Analysis of the SHARPEN Score in the Prediction of In-Hospital Mortality of Patients with Infective Endocarditis Undergoing Cardiac Surgery

Background: The SHARPEN score was developed to predict in-hospital mortality in patients hospitalized for infective endocarditis (IE), undergoing or not undergoing cardiac surgery. A comparison with other available scores has not yet been carried out. Objective: To evaluate the performance of the SHARPEN score in predicting in-hospital mortality in patients hospitalized for IE undergoing cardiac surgery and compare it with that of both nonspecific and IE-specific surgical scores. Methods: Retrospective cohort study including all admissions of patients ≥18 years who underwent cardiac surgery due to active IE (modified Duke criteria) at a tertiary care university hospital between 2007 and 2016. The SHARPEN score was compared to the EuroSCORE, EuroSCORE II, STS-IE, PALSUSE, AEPEI, EndoSCORE and RISK-E scores. Differences P<0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: A total of 105 hospitalizations of 101 patients (mean age 57.4±14.6 years; 75.2% male) were included. The median SHARPEN score was 11 (9-13) points. The observed in-hospital mortality was 29.5%. There was no statistically significant difference in observed vs. estimated mortality (P = 0.147), with an area under the ROC curve of 0.66 (P = 0.008). In comparison with the other scores, no difference was observed in discriminative ability. The statistics of the SHARPEN score at a cutoff >10 points — positive predictive value (PPV): 38.1%, 95%CI:30.4-46.6; negative predictive value (NPV): 80.0%, 95%CI:69.8-87.4; and accuracy: 58.1%, 95%CI:48.1-67.6 — showed overlapping 95%CIs, indicating no significant difference between scores. Conclusions: The SHARPEN score did not present parameters with a significant difference in relation to the other scores analyzed; despite the easy obtainment of its few variables, it has limited applicability in clinical practice, like other existing scores.