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.
