Common scoring systems face problems in their implementation to cardiac surgical patients. Therefore, many general scoring systems such as APACHE and MODS have excluded this subset of patients. As the acute patho-physiologic changes may be masked by multiple system support devices, such as IABPs and VADs, the cardiac surgical risk score (CASUS) was developed in 2005 to overcome these problems. The CASUS is an easy-to-use and reliable scoring system of only 10 variables, without extensive descriptor data collection required. This can easily be collected during routine observation of the cardiac surgical patient in the ICU.

Adapted from Hekmat, et al, 'Prediction of mortality in the intensive care unit cardiac surgical patients,' European Journal of CardioThoracic Surgery. 38:104, 2010.