Koh HK, Fook-Chong SMC, Lee HY, et al. - Researchers investigated the utility of novel inflammatory markers such as red cell distribution width to hemoglobin ratio (RDW/Hb) in prognostication of mortality in patients with epidermal necrolysis.

• A retrospective cohort study of 192 patients was conducted over a 17-year period in an Asian reference center.

• There appeared a strong predictive value of RDW/Hb for in-hospital mortality and bacteremia.

• RDW/Hb showed similar discrimination to the Severity-of-Illness Score for Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (SCORTEN), which is the most commonly used prognostic score in epidermal necrolysis.

• Addition of RDW/Hb to SCORTEN resulted in improvement of the predictive accuracy of the composite score (Re-SCORTEN).

• Overall findings support the utility of measuring RDW/Hb in addition to SCORTEN in improving the mortality prognostication of epidermal necrolysis.