The reliability and validity of simplified COMFORT scale in assessment of sedation levels in children on mechanical ventilation / 临床儿科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the scores from the simpliifed COMFORT scale with those from the bispectral index (BIS) and analyze the variation among different evaluators in children in an intensive care unit, and to investigate the reliability;validity of simpliifed COMFORT scale. Methods Twenty children between 3 and 16 years of ages on mechanical ventilation and sedation were simultaneously classiifed based on the BIS and the simpliifed COMFORT scale evaluated by 4 independent evalua-tors. The Kappa test was performed and the correlation between the two methods (Pearson correlation) was tested. Results In to-tal, 70 observations were performed on 20 patients. Based on the Kappa coefifcient, the agreement among evaluators ranged from 0.62 to 0.77 (P<0.001). There was a correlation between the BIS and the simpliifed COMFORT scale (r=0.53-0.61,P<0.01). Conclusions Due to the strong consistency between the independent evaluators and the correlation between the two methods, the reliability and validity of simpliifed COMFORT scale are preferable and simpliifed COMFORT scale is useful in classifying the level of sedation in children on mechanical ventilation.