Comparison of a Mobile Health Electronic Visual Analog Scale App With a Traditional Paper Visual Analog Scale for Pain Evaluation: Cross-Sectional Observational Study.

BACKGROUND: Accurate quantification of pain in a clinical setting is vital. The use of an electronic pain scale enables data to be collected, analyzed, and utilized much faster compared with traditional paper-based scales. The advancement of smart technology in pediatric and adult pain evaluation may offer opportunities to introduce easy-to-use and reliable pain assessment methods within different clinical settings. If promptly introduced within different pediatric and adult pain clinic services, validated and easily accessible mobile health pain apps may lead to early pain detection, promoting improvement in patient's quality of life and leading to potentially less time off from school or work. OBJECTIVE: This cross-sectional observational study aimed to investigate the interchangeability of an electronic visual analog scale (eVAS) app with a traditional paper visual analog scale (pVAS) among Australian children, adolescents, and adults for pain evaluation. METHODS: Healthy participants (age range 10-75 years) were recruited from a sporting club and a secondary school in Melbourne (Australia). The data collection process involved application of pressure (8.5 kg/cm2) from a Wagner Force Dial FDK 20 to the midpoint of the thumb. The pressure was applied twice with a 5-minute interval. At each pressure application, participants were asked to randomly record their pain perception using the "eVAS" accessible via the "Interactive Clinics" app and the traditional pVAS. Statistical analysis was conducted to determine intermethod and intramethod reliabilities. RESULTS: Overall, 109 healthy participants were recruited. Adults (mean age 42.43 years, SD 14.50 years) had excellent reliability, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.94 (95% CI 0.91-0.96). Children and adolescents (mean age 13.91 years, SD 2.89 years) had moderate-to-good intermethod and intramethod reliabilities, with an ICC of 0.80 (95% CI 0.70-0.87) and average ICC of 0.80 (95% CI 0.69-0.87), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The eVAS app appears to be interchangeable compared with the traditional pVAS among children, adolescents, and adults. This pain evaluation method may offer new opportunities to introduce user-friendly and validated pain assessment apps for patients, clinicians, and allied health professionals.

So, what's best? Accuracy and acceptance of thermometers in triage and inpatients in a low-resource tropical setting - The MaTe study.

Objectives: We searched for the most-suitable thermometry method in the low-resource, tropical setting of Sierra Leone, both in terms of accuracy and also patient and user acceptance. Methods: We conducted a prospective comparative study of different methods of body temperature measurement. Each participant had their temperature taken by four different methods: non-contact infrared temperature (NCIT), axillary, tympanic membrane and rectal measurements. Rectal temperature was considered clinical gold standard. Primary outcome was predicted sensitivity and specificity of thermometry methods in detecting fever (rectal temperature ≥38.0 °C). Questionnaires were used to explore patient and healthcare worker attitudes towards different methods of temperature-taking. Results: 824 rectal body temperature readings were taken from 562 participants. The mean rectal temperature was 37.4 °C (IQR 37 °C to 37.7 °C), with a minimum reading of 35.2 °C and maximum of 41.0 °C. Tympanic membrane thermometry showed the highest sensitivity of fever detection using the Genius3 TM thermometer (sensitivity 70.8 %, 95 % CI 60.2%-79.9 %; specificity 97.2 %, 95 % CI 95.5-98.4 %); and Braun TM (sensitivity 51.5 %, 95 % CI 42.6%-62.0 %; specificity 98.8 %, 95 % CI 97.7-99.5). NCIT thermometry sensitivity was low (36.8 %-41.4 % for the two devices used). Axillary thermometry sensitivity was 40.6 %. Participants ranked NCIT as the most and rectal as the least preferred method. Questionnaires from 32 participating nurses showed agreeability to using NCIT, TM and axillary methods routinely, but less so for rectal thermometry. Conclusions: When combining the accuracy of different thermometry methods in detecting fever with user and patient acceptability, tympanic membrane thermometry appears most suitable but also has limitations.

Emerging Tools to Capture Self-Reported Acute and Chronic Pain Outcome in Children and Adolescents: A Literature Review.

The advancement of digital health provides strategic and cost-effective opportunities for the progression of health care in children and adolescents. It is important for clinicians to be aware of the potential of emerging pain outcome measures and employ evidence-based tools capable of reliably tracking acute and chronic pain over time. The main emerging pain outcome measures for children and adolescents were examined. Overall, seven main texts and their corresponding digital health technologies were included in this study. The main findings indicated that the use of emerging digital health is able to reduce recall bias and can improve the real time paediatric data capture of acute and chronic symptoms. This literature review highlights new developments in pain management in children and adolescents and emphasizes the need for further research to be conducted on the use of emerging technologies in pain management. This may include larger scale, multicentre studies to further assess validity and reliability of these tools across various demographics. The privacy and security of mHealth data must also be carefully evaluated when choosing health applications that can be introduced into daily clinical settings.

Case Report: Acral Melanoma with Giant Local Recurrence in Rural Sierra Leone.

Malignant melanoma is rare in West Africa. Few cases of giant melanoma have been reported globally. We present a case of acral melanoma with giant local recurrence on the foot of a black-skinned woman from rural Sierra Leone, managed with below-knee amputation. Atypical, late presentation, poor access to diagnostics, and underreporting may contribute to underappreciation of melanoma as a healthcare problem in West Africa. This case highlights the need for improved cancer and skin health surveillance structures in West Africa-most importantly, increasing access to histopathology.