Comparison of Kristjansson Respiratory Score and Wang Respiratory Score in infants with bronchiolitis in a hospital emergency department.

Abstract

Objective: Several respiratory scores have been created to evaluate bronchiolitis' severity level, but it is still not clear which is the best score. The aim of this study is to compare the Wang Respiratory Score (WRS) and the Kristjansson Respiratory Score (KRS) in the setting of an emergency room.

Methods: We performed a prospective observational study with 60 infants with bronchiolitis admitted to a paediatric emergency department. For both scores, we assessed inter-rater reliability between two different health professionals (physician and physiotherapist), internal consistency, and correlation with SpO₂ testing the intraclass-correlation coefficient (ICC), weighted kappa, Cronbach $\alpha$ coefficient and Spearman tests, respectively.

Results: The inter-rater reliability was higher in KRS (ICC 0.79) and the Cronbach $\alpha$ and weighted kappa had similar values in KRS versus WRS. The correlation between the KRS/WRS and SpO₂ was poor/moderate upon admission and discharge for the first observer and the second observer.

Conclusions: While the internal consistency was similar in both scores, inter-rater reliability of KRS was higher than WRS, which allows us to conclude that it would have more consistent results when used to assess bronchiolitis' level of severity by health personnel in a busy hospital emergency room.