• Ryan W Czarnecki, Lamia G Harik, Lauren Q Malthaner, Junxin Shi, and Julie C Leonard.
• Department of Pediatrics, Division of Emergency Medicine, Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, United States.
• Resuscitation. 2020 Dec 1; 157: 41-48.

BackgroundA robust estimation method is needed to prevent medication dosing and equipment sizing errors and improve time to administration during paediatric resuscitation. An electronic measurement with computer interface may improve accuracy and alleviate cognitive burden. This study evaluates the accuracy of two electronic height measurement methods, a laser and an optical device, and compares them to the Broselow™ Pediatric Emergency Tape (BT) for weight estimation.MethodsWe enrolled children ages 0-14 years from the emergency department of a free-standing, academic children's hospital. We obtained sex, body habitus, true weight, true height, BT colour, and experimental heights. We converted experimental height measurements into weight estimates using standardised growth charts. We calculated Pearson correlations between experimental and actual measurements and the percentages of weight estimates within 10% and 20% of true weights. We repeated analyses on a restricted cohort of children 0-11 years, the intended BT age range.ResultsWe enrolled 198 children. The laser, optical device and BT weight estimates had strong positive correlations with the actual weight measurements with Pearson's correlation coefficients of 0.946, p < 0.0001, 0.965, p < 0.0001, and 0.825, p < 0.0001 respectively. 47.8% of optical weight estimates fell within 10% of actual weight and 80.6% within 20%, compared to 40.5% and 75.4% of laser estimates and 39.8% and 65.1% of BT estimates.ConclusionElectronic-based weight estimates were more accurate than the BT. The accuracy of medication dosing and equipment sizing during paediatric resuscitation may be improved by integrating optical height-based weight estimates with electronic clinical decision support.Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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