PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Martin Spångfors AU - Mats Molt AU - Karin Samuelson TI - In-hospital cardiac arrest and preceding National Early Warning Score (NEWS): A retrospective case-control study AID - 10.7861/clinmed.2019-0137 DP - 2020 Jan 01 TA - Clinical Medicine PG - 55--60 VI - 20 IP - 1 4099 - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/20/1/55.short 4100 - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/20/1/55.full SO - Clin Med2020 Jan 01; 20 AB - We aimed to describe and evaluate the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) in the 24 hours preceding an in-hospital cardiac arrest among general somatic ward patients.The 24 hours preceding the in-hospital cardiac arrest were divided into four timespans and analysed by a medical record review of 127:254 matched case-control patients. The median NEWS ranged from 3 (2–6) to 6 (3–9) points for cases vs 1 (0–3) to 1 (0–3) point for controls. The proportion of cases ranged from 23–45% at high risk vs 3–6% for controls. The NEWS high-risk category was associated with an increase of 3.17 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.66–6.04) to 4.43 (95% CI 2.56–7.67) in odds of in-hospital cardiac arrest compared to the low-risk category.NEWS, with its intuitive and for healthcare staff easy to interpret risk classification, is suitable for discriminating deteriorating patients with major deviating vital signs scoring high risk on NEWS.