Archives of disease in childhood
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Estimating the weight of ethnically diverse children attending an Australian emergency department: a prospective, blinded, comparison of age-based and length-based tools including Mercy, PAWPER and Broselow.
To prospectively compare the actual weights of Australian children in an ethnically diverse metropolitan setting with the predicted weights using the Paediatric Advanced Weight Prediction in the Emergency Room (PAWPER) tape, Broselow tape, Mercy system and calculated weights using the updated Advanced Paediatric Life Support (APLS), Luscombe and Owens and Best Guess formulae. ⋯ In an ethnically diverse population, length-based methods with or without body habitus modification are superior to age-based methods for predicting actual body weight. Body habitus modifications increase the accuracy and precision slightly.