• Burns · Aug 2014

    Randomized Controlled Trial

    A comparison of two smartphone applications and the validation of smartphone applications as tools for fluid calculation for burns resuscitation.

    • R Morris, M Javed, O Bodger, S Hemington Gorse, and D Williams.
    • The Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery, Morriston Hospital, Swansea SA6 6NL, United Kingdom. Electronic address: rm502@doctors.org.uk.
    • Burns. 2014 Aug 1;40(5):826-34.

    AbstractWe conducted a randomised, blinded study to compare the accuracy and perceived usability of two smartphone apps (uBurn(©) and MerseyBurns(©)) and a general purpose electronic calculator for calculating fluid requirements using the Parkland formula. Bespoke software randomly generated simulated clinical data; randomly allocated the sequence of calculation methods; recorded participants' responses and response times; and calculated error magnitude. Participants calculated fluid requirements for nine scenarios (three for each: calculator, uBurn(©), MerseyBurns(©)); then rated ease of use (VAS) and preference (ranking), and made written comments. Data were analysed using ANOVA and qualitative methods. The sample population consisted of 34 volunteers who performed a total of 306 calculations. The three methods showed no significant difference in incidence or magnitude of errors. Mean (SD) response time in seconds for the calculator was 86.7 (50.7), compared to 71.7 (42.9) for uBurn(©) and 69.0 (35.6) for MerseyBurns(©). Both apps were significantly faster than the calculator (p=0.013 and p=0.017 respectively, ANOVA: Tukey's HSD test). All methods showed a learning effect (p<0.001). The participants rated ease of use on a VAS scale with a higher score indicating greater ease of use. The calculator was easiest to use with a mean score (SD) of 12.3 (2.1), followed by MerseyBurns(©) with 11.8 (2.7) and then uBurn(©) with 11.3 (2.7). The differences were not found to be significant at the p=0.05 level after using paired samples t-test and a multiple correction was applied manually. Preference ranking followed a similar trend with mean rankings (SD) of 1.85 (0.17), 1.94 (0.74) and 2.18 (0.90) for the calculator, MerseyBurns(©) and uBurn(©) respectively. Again, none of these differences were significant at the p=0.05 level.Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…