Abstract 598 Poster Session I, Saturday, 5/1 (poster 175)

Aim: To develop a measure of disease severity suitable for children with acute respiratory illness (ARI) including influenza.

Methods: A parental questionnaire was constructed using items from existing adult measures of ARI, generic paediatric illness severity measures, and interviews with 3 community paediatricians and parents of 23 children with ARI. The resulting scale comprised 18 questions, each with a 4 point Likert response. The parents of 220 children presenting with ARI symptoms to primary care physicians' offices in Calgary, Halifax and Toronto, were asked to complete this scale 16 times; twice a day for 7 days, and once on Day 10 and Day 14. The new questionnaire score was compared with: the physician's and nurse's assessments at enrollment, the nurse's assessment again on day three, parent's global visual analogue rating of their child's health and the child's temperature at each assessment.

Findings: Complete data was obtained for 206 children between the ages of 1 month and 12 years (median 3.2 years). Influenza A was identified in 69 children (33%), and other viruses in 35 (17%). The Canadian Acute Respiratory Illness and Flu Scale (CARIFS) scores decreased from a mean (SD) score on Day 1 of 28.0 (10.3) to 17.1 (11.7) on Day 3, and 2.5 (5.7) on Day 14. (Figure)

Fig 1
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CARIFS scores correlated with all other measures of illness severity, regardless of age group and viral aetiology (Spearman's correlations between 0.29 and 0.52). (Table)

Table 1 No caption available.

Conclusion: The CARIFS is a valid and responsive severity scale of childhood ARI.

This study was partially funded by an unrestricted grant from Hoffman La Roche Inc., Dr. Davies is supported by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.