Pediatric intensive care units (PICU) are an indispensable component of a successful health care establishment. They play a crucial part in reducing morbidity and mortality in the adolescent group. Several models and scores have been tried for internal auditing and in detecting the case fatality rate of a patient admitted in PICU and NICU. This helps the clinician in triaging patient care as and when required. The PRISM III score is widely used in PICU and NICU for the same. To evaluate the

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... dity of the PRISM III score in predicting mortality in children admitted to PICU and NICU in a tertiary care hospital and to predict the probability of death of various PRISM III scores. Subjects and Methods: 260 patients admitted to PICU and NICU were included in the study after obtaining informed consent from parents/guardians. Each patient was evaluated for the parameters in the PRISM III score and blood was drawn to send for investigations and results were entered in the proforma and were evaluated. Results: There was an increase in mortality rate with raise in PRISM III score. PRISM III offered a fair predictive power with the area under the curve 0.7 with 95% C.I. Out of 260 patients included in the study 24(9.2%) were dead. Variables like systolic BP, abnormal mental status, pupillary reflex, acidosis, and low platelet counts were significantly associated with a higher mortality rate. Conclusion: Evaluation of mortality and outcome of a patient admitted in PICU in a tertiary care hospital is best predicted by PRISM III score.