Jentzer JC, van Diepen S, Murphree DH, et al. - Given that critical care risk scores may stratify mortality risk among cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) patients, researchers conducted this investigation to analyze risk score performance across common CICU admission diagnoses. They compared the discrimination (c-statistic) and calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic) of each risk score in patients with selected admission diagnoses using a database of 9,898 unique CICU patients admitted between 2007 and 2015. According to the findings, the overall mortality rate in hospitals was 9.2%. The c-statistic values for each score were 0.85-0.86 in acute coronary syndrome patients and 0.76-0.79 in heart failure patients. Compared with non-critical cardiac diagnoses (c-statistic range 0.76-0.86), discrimination for each risk score was lower in patients with critical care diagnoses (c-statistic range 0.68-0.78). The risk scores tested demonstrated inconsistent mortality risk stratification performance across admission diagnoses in this CICU population, highlighting the need to develop improved mortality risk prediction tools among critically ill CICU patients.