The Shock Index is not accurate at predicting outcomes in patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding

Summary Background Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) remains a major cause of hospital admission worldwide. The recent UK National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) report on severe gastrointestinal bleeding used the Shock Index to assess bleeding severity and found an association between Shock Index and mortality. However, this has never been prospectively validated as a predictor of outcome in UGIB. Aims To compare the Shock Index with existing pre‐endoscopic UGIB risk scores in predicting outcomes after UGIB Methods In an international, prospective study of 3012 consecutive patients with UGIB, we compared the Shock Index with existing scores including the Glasgow Blatchford score (GBS), admission Rockall score, AIMS65, and the newly described “ABC” score. Pre‐determined endpoints were need for major (≥4 units red cells) transfusion, need for endoscopic therapy and 30‐day mortality. Results The Shock Index was inferior to the GBS in predicting need for major transfusion (area under the receiver operator characteristic curve [AUROC] 0.655 vs 0.836, P