Comparisons of six endoscopy independent scoring systems for the prediction of clinical outcomes for elderly and younger patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding

Objectives To compare the predictive ability of six pre-endoscopic scoring systems (ABC, AIMS65, GBS, MAP(ASH), pRS, and T-score) for outcomes of upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) in elderly and younger patients. Methods A retrospective study of 1260 patients, including 530 elderly patients (age ≥ 65) and 730 younger patients (age < 65) presenting with UGIB, was performed at Zhongda Hospital Southeast University, from January 2015 to December 2020. Six scoring systems were used. Results ABC had the largest areas under the curve (AUCs) of 0.827 (0.792–0.858), and 0.958 (0.929–0.987) for elderly and younger groups for predicting mortality respectively. The differences of the AUCs for predicting the outcome of mortality and rebleeding between the two groups were significant for ABC and pRS (p < 0.01). For intervention prediction, significant differences were observed only for pRS [AUC 0.623 (0.578–0.669) vs. 0.699 (0.646–0.752)] (p < 0.05) between the two groups. For intensive care unit (ICU) admission, the AUC for MAP (ASH) [0.791 (0.718–0.865) vs. 0.891 (0.831–0.950)] and pRS [0.610 (0.514–0.706) vs. 0.891 (0.699–0.865)] were more effective for the younger group (p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively). For comparison of scoring systems in the same cohort, ABC was significantly higher than pRS: AUC 0.710 (0.699–0.853, p < 0.05) and T-score 0.670 (0.628–0.710, p < 0.01) for predicting mortality in the elderly group. In the younger group, ABC was significantly higher than GBS and T-score (p < 0.01). MAP(ASH) performs the best in predicting intervention in both groups. Conclusions ABC and pRS are more accurate for predicting mortality and rebleeding in the younger cohort, and pRS may not be suitable for elderly patients. There was no difference between the two study populations for GBS, AIMS65, and T-score. Except for ICU admission, MAP(ASH) showed fair accuracy for both cohorts.