• Deepak Geetaprasad Mishra, Tamorish Kole, Rahul Nagpal, and Jeffery Paul Smith.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Max Health Care, New Delhi 110017, India.
• World J Emerg Med. 2016 Jan 1; 7 (1): 40-3.

BackgroundThe Broselow™ Pediatric Emergency Tape indicates standardized, pre-calculated medication doses, dose delivery volumes, and equipment sizes using color-coded zones based on height-weight correlations. The present study attempted to provide more evidence on the effectiveness of the Broselow™ Pediatric Emergency Tape by comparing the tape-estimated weights with actual weights. We hypothesized that the Broselow™ Pediatric Emergency Tape would overestimate weights in Indian children aged<10 years, leading to inaccurate dosing and equipment sizing in the emergency setting.MethodsThis prospective study of pediatric patients aged <10 years who were divided into three groups based on actual body weight: <10 kg, 10-18 kg, and >18 kg. We calculated the percentage difference between the Broselow-predicted weight and the measured weight as a measure of tape bias. Concordant results were those with a mean percent difference within 3%. Standard deviation was measured to determine precision. Accuracy was determined as color-coded zone prediction and measured weight concordance, including the percentage overestimation by 1-2 zones.ResultsThe male-to-female ratio of the patients was 1.3:1. Total agreement between color-coding was 63.18% (κ=0.582). The Broselow™ color-coded zone agreement was 74.8% in the <10 kg group, 61.24% in the 10-18 kg group, and 53.42% in the >18 kg group.ConclusionsThe Broselow™ Pediatric Emergency Tape showed good evidence for being more reliable in children of the <10 kg and 10-18 kg groups. However, as pediatric weight increased, predictive reliability decreased. This raises concerns over the use of the Broselow™ Pediatric Emergency Tape in Indian children because body weight was overestimated in those weighing >18 kg.

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