Assessment of the accuracy of the CALCULATE scale for pressure injury in critically ill patients

Pressure injury is damage to the skin and underlying soft tissue that occurs in response to intense and/or prolonged skin pressure. The Braden scale is the most used in health services to assess pressure injury. However, this scale was not specifically developed for critically ill patients. The Critical Care Pressure Ulcer Assessment Tool Made Easy (CALCULATE) scale was developed for patients in intensive care units. The objective of this study was to compare the accuracy of the CALCULATE scale with that of Braden in predicting the risk of pressure injury in critically ill patients. This was a prospective cohort study, involving patients who did not have pressure injury on admission to the intensive care unit of a tertiary hospital in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. Data collection took place between January and July 2020 using the Braden and CALCULATE scales, in addition to clinical and sociodemographic variables. Patients were followed up until discharge from the intensive care unit or death. Fifty-one patients were included in the study. Of these, 29 (56.9%) developed pressure injury. To predict pressure injury onset, the areas under the receiver operator characteristic curve of the Braden scale on the first day and the lowest score during the first 3 days were 0.71 (0.56–0.86) and 0.70 (0.53–0.87), respectively. The areas under the receiver operator characteristic curve of the CALCULATE scale on the first day and the highest score during the first 3 days were 0.91 (0.82–0.99) and 0.92 (0.85–1.00), respectively. In the logistic regression analysis, the CALCULATE scale on the first day remained an independent predictor of pressure injury onset after controlling for age and length of stay in the intensive care unit. We found that the CALCULATE scale may be more accurate than the Braden scale as a tool to assess the risk of developing pressure injury in critically ill patients.