Performance of Automated Point-of-Care Respiratory Rate Counting versus Manual Counting in Children under Five Admitted with Severe Febrile Illness to Kisantu Hospital, DR Congo.

ABSTRACT: To improve the early recognition of danger signs in children with severe febrile illness in low resource settings, WHO promotes automated respiratory rate (RR) counting, but its performance is unknown in this population. Therefore, we prospectively evaluated the field performance of automated point-of-care plethysmography-based RR counting in hospitalized children with severe febrile illness (<5 years) in DR Congo. A trained research nurse simultaneously counted the RR manually (comparative method) and automatically with the Masimo Rad G pulse oximeter. Valid paired RR measurements were obtained in 202 (83.1%) children, among whom 43.1% (87/202) had fast breathing according to WHO criteria based on manual counting. Automated counting frequently underestimated the RR (median difference of -

SUBMITTER: Tack B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8623579 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature