Objective To investigate the predictive value of quick sequential organ failure assessment (qSOFA) score on the prognosis of adult patients with infection in intensive care unit (ICU). Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on the clinical data of the infected patients in the ICU of the 401st Hospital of the People's Liberation Army from August 1st, 2000 to December 31st, 2017. The clinical data included patients' gender, age, basic diseases, etc.; the worst values of vital signs and laboratory test results within 24 hours of admission were recorded, the scores of the qSOFA, sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA), acute physiology and chronic health evaluationⅡ(APACHEⅡ) were calculated separately; the outcome of ICU was recorded. The predictive values of three scoring systems were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). Results Excluding patients with incomplete clinical data, cancer and immunosuppressive patients, a total number of 1 059 patients were enrolled in this study, with 679 males and 380 females, the average age was 72.57±16.06, the ICU mortality was 35.32% (374/1 059). The ROC curve analysis showed that the areas under ROC curve (AUC) of APACHE Ⅱ, SOFA, qSOFA scores to predict the prognosis of infected patients were 0.713, 0.744 and 0.662, respectively. Although the AUC of qSOFA in predicting prognosis was significantly lower than that of other two scoring systems (both P < 0.05), but it still had some predictive ability. According to the Youden index, the best cut-off point for qSOFA was 2 to evaluate the prognosis of the infection, and the sensitivity was 71.65%, the specificity was 53.87%, the positive likelihood ratio was 1.55, the negative likelihood ratio was 0.53, the positive predictive value was 0.426, the negative predictive value was 0.799, and the accuracy was 59.62%. The mortality of the infected patients was increased with qSOFA score, and the mortality difference among patients with different qSOFA scores was statistically significant (χ2= 84.605, P = 0.000). The patients were divided into two groups according to the cut-off value of qSOFA, and the mortality in qSOFA score ≥2 group was higher than that in qSOFA score < 2 group [odds ratio (OR) = 2.767, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) = 2.116-3.617, P = 0.000]. Conclusions qSOFA, SOFA and APACHE Ⅱscores have the capability of predicting the outcome for the infected patients. qSOFA score is expected to be a quick and simple tool to judge the prognosis of ICU infection patients because of its advantages of quick acquisition.