APACHE: A Nonproprietary Measure of Severity of Illness

Excerpt

To the editor: In their recent editorial, Couch and Nash (1) encourage physicians to pay some much-needed attention to the measurement of severity of illness. We agree with many of their conclusions but wish to correct the statement that all of the currently available severity measures are proprietary.

The method for defining APACHE II (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II) scores has been reported (2, 3) in the clinical literature. The APACHE measure is also the only system for classification of the severity of disease that many independent investigators have used to study the efficacy of different treatment approaches