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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian Journal of Neurotrauma 2022; 19(01): 052-053
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1732790
Letter to the Editor

FOUR Score or GCS in Neurocritical Care: Modification or Adaptation

Amit Agrawal 
1   Department of Neurosurgery, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, India
,
Md Moshiur Rahman 
2   Neurosurgery Department, Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh
,
Robert Ahmed Khan
3   Neurosurgery Department, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
,
Ivan David Lozada-Martinez
4   Medical and Surgical Research Center, University of Cartagena, Cartagena, Colombia
,
Luis Rafael Moscote-Salazar
5   Center for Biomedical Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Cartagena, Cartagena, Colombia
,
Rakesh Mishra
6   Department of Neurosurgery, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
,
Sabrina Rahman
7   Department of Public Health, Independent University, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh
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Evaluating impaired consciousness in the clinical and surgical intensive care unit (ICU) is challenging. The eye response, motor response, brainstem reflexes, and respiration pattern (FOUR) score and Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score are two standard scoring systems for uniform, quantitative, and objective assessment of the severity of illness and predicting outcomes in neurocritical care. It is not clear which score has better calibration and discrimination power in predicting critical patients' outcomes. The debate has different implications for children as scoring systems face unique challenges when they are used for critically ill children. The GCS has been regularly utilized in neurosurgical ICUs, but its dependability in predicting patient outcomes is continuously debated.[1] The FOUR score is an indicator of the prognosis of fundamentally sick patients which has significant favorable circumstances.[2] [3] The FOUR score depends on the absolute minimum of tests essential for evaluating a patient with altered consciousness by incorporating many essential data that is not surveyed by the GCS or other scales. It includes the estimation of brainstem reflexes, determination of eye-opening, a broad spectrum of motor responses, and the presence of anomalous breath rhythms and a respiratory drive.[4]



Publication History

Article published online:
29 July 2021

© 2021. Neurotrauma Society of India. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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