Objectives To evaluate the level of concordance between the 2007 PRETEMED guidelines and the 2012 American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) guidelines in medical patients at admission.

Methods A cross-sectional, observational and descriptive study was designed and included all adult medical patients admitted from an emergency department. Firstly, patients classified as low-moderate risk and high risk according to PRETEMED were compared to those classified by ACCP as low and high risk. Secondly, the same analysis was performed but this time low and moderate-high risk patients according to PRETEMED were compared to ACCP low and high risk patients. The level of concordance was calculated using the kappa concordance index. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Clinical Research of the hospital.

Results The analysis was performed with 207 patients; 53.1% were male and the median age was 75.3 years (minimum 18, maximum 100 years old). The most common diagnosis at admission was related to a respiratory disease (37.2%). The level of concordance was 0.59 (95% CI 0.48 to 0.70) when moderate risk patients were grouped with low-risk patients and 0.53 (95% CI 0.42 to 0.65) when moderate risk patients were grouped with high-risk patients.

Conclusions The level of concordance between both guides is moderate. It would be helpful to confirm whether the level of agreement improves when the patient's condition stabilises after several days of hospitalisation.