- Title
- Validation of an Electronic Visual Analog Scale App for Pain Evaluation in Children and Adolescents with Symptomatic Hypermobility: Cross-sectional Study
- Creator
- Maarj, Muhammad; Pacey, Verity; Tofts, Louise; Clapham, Matthew; Girones Garcia, Xavier; Coda, Andrea
- Relation
- JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting Vol. 5, Issue 4, no. e41930
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/41930
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications, Inc.
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Background: Rapid advances in mobile apps for clinical data collection for pain evaluation have resulted in more efficient data handling and analysis than traditional paper-based approaches. As paper-based visual analogue scale (p-VAS) scores are commonly used to assess pain levels, new emerging apps need to be validated prior to clinical application with symptomatic children and adolescents. Objective: This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of an electronic visual analogue scale (e-VAS) method via a mobile health (mHealth) App in children and adolescents diagnosed with hypermobility spectrum disorder/hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (HSD/HEDS) in comparison with the traditional p-VAS. Methods: Children diagnosed with HSD/HEDS aged 5-18 years were recruited from a sports medicine center in Sydney (New South Wales, Australia). Consenting participants assigned in random order to the e-VAS and p-VAS platforms were asked to indicate their current lower limb pain level and completed pain assessment e-VAS or p-VAS at one time point. Instrument agreement between the 2 methods was determined from the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and through Bland–Altman analysis. Results:In total, 43 children with HSD/HEDS aged 11 (SD 3.8) years were recruited and completed this study. The difference between the 2 VAS platforms of median values was 0.20. Bland–Altman analysis revealed a difference of 0.19 (SD 0.95) with limits of agreement ranging –1.67 to 2.04. An ICC of 0.87 (95% CI 0.78-0.93) indicated good reliability. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the e-VAS mHealth App is a validated tool and a feasible method of collecting pain recording scores when compared with the traditional paper format in children and adolescents with HSD/HEDS. The e-VAS App can be reliably used for pediatric pain evaluation, and it could potentially be introduced into daily clinical practice to improve real-time symptom monitoring. Further research is warranted to investigate the usage of the app for remote support in real clinical settings.
- Subject
- hypermobility syndrome; Ehlers-Danlos syndrome; hypermobility; hypermobile; mobile application; mobile app
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1486945
- Identifier
- uon:52002
- Identifier
- ISSN:2561-6722
- Language
- eng
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