Predicting Acute Chest Syndrome in Sickle Cell Disease

Acute chest syndrome (ACS) is the leading cause of death during vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) in patients with sickle cell disease (see Figure 1). Because ACS usually develops days after patients present to the emergency department (ED) for VOC, predicting low ACS risk early could help permit safe discharge, reducing hospitalizations.

To learn more, researchers prospectively assessed 400 adults with hemoglobin SS or sickle β-thalassemia disease presenting to an ED with VOC. They used the predictive severity (PRESEV) score — a simple tool that incorporates clinical information (reticulocyte count, hemoglobin, leukocyte count, and pain score) — to assess each patient’s risk of developing ACS (score range, 0–16; score ≤5 indicates low risk…