Clinical Scores for Dyspnoea Severity in Children: A Prospective Validation Study

BACKGROUND: In acute dyspnoeic children, assessment of dyspnoea severity and treatment response is frequently based on clinical dyspnoea scores. Our study aim was to validate five commonly used paediatric dyspnoea scores. METHODS: Fifty children aged 0–8 years with acute dyspnoea were clinically assessed before and after bronchodilator treatment, a subset of 27 children were videotaped and assessed twice by nine observers. The observers scored clinical signs necessary to calculate the Asthma Score (AS), Asthma Severity Score (ASS), Clinical Asthma Evaluation Score 2 (CAES-2), Pediatric Respiratory Assessment Measure (PRAM) and respiratory rate, accessory muscle use, decreased breath sounds (RAD). RESULTS: A total of 1120 observations were used to assess fourteen measurement properties within domains of validity, reliability and utility. All five dyspnoea scores showed overall poor results, scoring insufficiently on more than half of the quality criteria for measurement properties. The AS and PRAM were the most valid with good values on six and moderate values on three properties. Poor results were mainly due to insufficient measurement properties in the validity and reliability domains whereas utility properties were moderate to good in all scores. CONCLUSION: This study shows that commonly used dyspnoea scores show insufficient validity and reliability to allow for clinical use without caution.