Comparison of Kristjansson Respiratory Score and Wang Respiratory Score in infants with bronchiolitis in a hospital emergency department.

OBJECTIVE

Several respiratory scores have been created to evaluate bronchiolitis' severity level, but it is still not clear which is the best score. The aim of this study is to compare the Wang Respiratory Score (WRS) and the Kristjansson Respiratory Score (KRS) in the setting of an emergency room.

METHODS

We performed a prospective observational study with 60 infants with bronchiolitis admitted to a paediatric emergency department. For both scores, we assessed inter-rater reliability between two different health professionals (physician and physiotherapist), internal consistency, and correlation with SpO testing the intraclass-correlation coefficient (ICC), weighted kappa, Cronbach coefficient and Spearman tests, respectively.

RESULTS

The inter-rater reliability was higher in KRS (ICC 0.79) and the Cronbach and weighted kappa had similar values in KRS versus WRS. The correlation between the KRS/WRS and SpO was poor/moderate upon admission and discharge for the first observer and the second observer.

CONCLUSIONS

While the internal consistency was similar in both scores, inter-rater reliability of KRS was higher than WRS, which allows us to conclude that it would have more consistent results when used to assess bronchiolitis' level of severity by health personnel in a busy hospital emergency room.