Introduction:

One of the various instruments that can be used to evaluate the impact of risk factors on the survival of patients undergoing valve surgery is the VMCP score. This work evaluates the performance of this tool.

Objective:

To validate the surgical risk score for heart valve surgery (VMCP score) in our hospital unit.

Material and method:

A prospective cohort study was conducted on 239 patients undergoing heart valve surgery, estimating the risk with the VMCP score. The sample was divided into two groups at a cut-off point of 8. The discriminating power of the score was analyzed based on the area under the ROC curve. A value of p < 0.05 was considered significant. The data were processed using SPSS v.25.0.

Results:

The score stratified the samples as follows: 40.6% of patients were without risk and 59.4% were at risk. The evaluation of the calibration component showed that the score was not appropriate for our sample (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient: 0.59). The discrimination component of the score showed a poor capacity to distinguish between the population at risk of mortality (0.630) and/or morbidity (0.655).

Conclusion:

It is not valid to use the surgical risk score for heart valve surgery (VMCP score) in our hospital unit.