@Article{info:doi/10.2196/41930,
author="Maarj, Muhammad
and Pacey, Verity
and Tofts, Louise
and Clapham, Matthew
and Giron{\`e}s Garcia, Xavier
and Coda, Andrea",
title="Validation of an Electronic Visual Analog Scale App for Pain Evaluation in Children and Adolescents With Symptomatic Hypermobility: Cross-sectional Study",
journal="JMIR Pediatr Parent",
year="2022",
month="Oct",
day="26",
volume="5",
number="4",
pages="e41930",
keywords="hypermobility syndrome; Ehlers-Danlos syndrome; hypermobility; hypermobile; mobile application; mobile app; pain measurement; pain; validation; validate; scale; measure; pain severity; pediatric; visual analogue scale; mHealth; mobile health; children; adolescent; youth; child; digital health tool",
abstract="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. ",
issn="2561-6722",
doi="10.2196/41930",
url="https://pediatrics.jmir.org/2022/4/e41930",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/41930",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36287606"
}