TY - JOUR T1 - Performance of the MEDS score in predicting mortality among emergency department patients with a suspected infection: a meta-analysis JF - Emergency Medicine Journal JO - Emerg Med J SP - 232 LP - 239 DO - 10.1136/emermed-2019-208901 VL - 37 IS - 4 AU - Gensheng Zhang AU - Kai Zhang AU - Xie Zheng AU - Wei Cui AU - Yucai Hong AU - Zhongheng Zhang Y1 - 2020/04/01 UR - http://emj.bmj.com/content/37/4/232.abstract N2 - Objectives To carry out a meta-analysis to examine the prognostic performance of the Mortality in Emergency Department Sepsis (MEDS) score in predicting mortality among emergency department patients with a suspected infection.Methods Electronic databases—PubMed, Embase, Scopus, EBSCO and the Cochrane Library—were searched for eligible articles from their respective inception through February 2019. Sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios and receiver operator characteristic area under the curve were calculated. Subgroup analyses were performed to explore the prognostic performance of MEDS in selected populations.Results We identified 24 studies involving 21 246 participants. The pooled sensitivity of MEDS to predict mortality was 79% (95% CI 72% to 84%); specificity was 74% (95% CI 68% to 80%); positive likelihood ratio 3.07 (95% CI 2.47 to 3.82); negative likelihood ratio 0.29 (95% CI 0.22 to 0.37) and area under the curve 0.83 (95% CI 0.80 to 0.86). Significant heterogeneity was seen among included studies. Meta-regression analyses showed that the time at which the MEDS score was measured and the cut-off value used were important sources of heterogeneity.Conclusion The MEDS score has moderate accuracy in predicting mortality among emergency department patients with a suspected infection. A study comparison MEDS and qSOFA in the same population is needed. ER -