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Cardiac Anesthesia Risk Evaluation Score (CARE)
Simple clinical-judgement classification of risk before cardiac surgery.
Cardiac Anesthesia Risk Evaluation Score (CARE)
Clinical class
Emergency surgery (cannot be delayed for full workup/optimisation)
ResultClass 1
Risk of mortality and major morbidity rises progressively from class 1 to 5.
When to use
- Rapid bedside risk stratification before cardiac surgery, as an alternative to multifactorial indices (e.g., EuroSCORE).
Formula
Clinical-judgement classification into 5 classes based on comorbidity control and surgical complexity, with an 'E' modifier appended for emergency surgery.
Pearls and pitfalls
- Performs comparably to more complex multifactorial risk indices (Parsonnet, Tuman, Tu) for predicting mortality and morbidity after cardiac surgery.
- Relies on clinician judgement rather than a fixed checklist, so inter-rater calibration matters.