A new score enhances prediction of in-hospital mortality post-surgery

A novel comorbidity score, termed the comorbid operative risk evaluation (CORE), outperformed existing indices in predicting in-hospital mortality among surgical patients. Using data from 699,155 records, the CORE score achieved higher accuracy than both the Elixhauser Comorbidity Index and the Charlson Comorbidity Index across multiple databases. For instance, CORE scored 0.90 in the national inpatient sample, significantly surpassing the Elixhauser’s 0.84 and the Charlson’s 0.76, demonstrating its potential for improving outcome-based research.