Intervention to improve interobserver agreement in the assessment of children with pharyngitis.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study is to examine the effectiveness of an intervention to improve interobserver reliability of clinical evaluation of children with pharyngitis.


METHODS
This was a sequential trial performed in an academic children's hospital emergency department. Two sets of 100 children aged 2 to 18 years with a complaint of sore throat were independently evaluated by emergency department attending staff and residents for coryza, scarlatiniform rash, tonsillar enlargement, tonsillar erythema, tonsillar exudates, cervical adenopathy, and palatal petechiae. The first 100 subjects were evaluated according to the clinician's routine practice; the second set was evaluated using a visual-aid sheet showing pictorial gradations of each characteristic. All findings were scored dichotomously and analyzed by kappa statistics.


RESULTS
Both sets of patients were similar with respect to age, sex, race, and prior episodes of group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus. Interobserver reliability without the visual aid was poor in all areas except tonsillar enlargement and tonsillar exudates which had kappa values of 0.50 and 0.58, respectively. The use of the visual-aid sheet did not significantly improve reliability in any of the clinical evaluations, and all kappa scores remained below 0.50.


CONCLUSIONS
Interobserver reliability in evaluating clinical signs of pharyngitis is fair to poor. The use of pictorial prompts does not improve interobserver reliability.
Jensen
Duane M
DM
Department of Pediatrics, Section of Emergency Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Brousseau
David C
DC
Tumpach
Elizabeth A
EA
Gorelick
Marc H
MH
D000293:Adolescent; D001296:Audiovisual Aids; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D010372:Pediatrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010612:Pharyngitis / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011446:Prospective Studies