Penicillin allergy de-labeling: Adaptation of risk stratification tool for patients and families

Penicillin allergy is reported in 10% of the population; however, over 90% of patients are deemed non-allergic upon allergist assessment. The goal of this quality improvement project is to validate a patient-driven assessment tool to safely identify patients at low risk of penicillin allergy and de-label them. Pediatric patients and pregnant women referred to the institution's allergy clinics for penicillin allergy assessment were invited to use the patient tool to complete a self-assessment, resulting in the assignment of a risk category. The risk stratification determined using the patient tool was compared against the allergist's assessment.

The patient tool demonstrated agreement with the allergist assessment in 57/84 (67.9%, 95% CI [56.7%,77.4%]) assessments, intra-class correlation (ICC) = 0.618, p < 0.001. In 22/84 (26.2%) assessments, the patient tool determined a higher risk category, primarily due to differences in patients’ perceived timing and description of symptoms. Only 5/84 (6.0%) patients were placed in a lower risk category by the patient tool compared to the allergist assessment. The patient tool demonstrates good validity in determining penicillin allergy risk, offering potential as a method of empowering patients to advocate in their care. Iterative changes to the patient tool will be applied to increase agreement.