TY  - JOUR
AU  - Maarj, Muhammad
AU  - Pacey, Verity
AU  - Tofts, Louise
AU  - Clapham, Matthew
AU  - Gironès Garcia, Xavier
AU  - Coda, Andrea
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/10/26
TI  - Validation of an Electronic Visual Analog Scale App for Pain Evaluation in Children and Adolescents With Symptomatic Hypermobility: Cross-sectional Study
JO  - JMIR Pediatr Parent
SP  - e41930
VL  - 5
IS  - 4
KW  - hypermobility syndrome
KW  - Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
KW  - hypermobility
KW  - hypermobile
KW  - mobile application
KW  - mobile app
KW  - pain measurement
KW  - pain
KW  - validation
KW  - validate
KW  - scale
KW  - measure
KW  - pain severity
KW  - pediatric
KW  - visual analogue scale
KW  - mHealth
KW  - mobile health
KW  - children
KW  - adolescent
KW  - youth
KW  - child
KW  - digital health tool
AB  - 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. 
SN  - 2561-6722
UR  - https://pediatrics.jmir.org/2022/4/e41930
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/41930
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36287606
DO  - 10.2196/41930
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/41930
ER  -