Abstract:
The Brighton Collaboration has developed a case definition to assess sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) as an adverse event of special interest for Lassa fever vaccines. We applied the level of diagnostic certainty (LOC) criteria to 300 SNHL patients aged 18 to 59 years at a tertiary hospital in Ghana from January 2017 through June 2020 and evaluated the applicability of this definition. Most SNHL cases were assessable (85.0%) and assigned level 1 LOC (84.3%); missing information on otoscopy (86.7%) was the main reason for being unable to classify cases. Consistency of LOC classification between assessors was 99.3%. Cases with electronic medical records (EMRs) were less assessable than those with paper records (30.9% versus 93.8%). These findings indicate that the SNHL definition would be applicable to retrospectively ascertain and classify cases in resource-limited settings. Developing an EMR template to document otoscopy results may improve the feasibility at this hospital to ascertain SNHL.
摘要:
Brighton合作组织已经制定了一个病例定义,以评估感觉神经性听力损失(SNHL)作为拉沙热疫苗特别感兴趣的不良事件。从2017年1月到2020年6月,我们将诊断确定性(LOC)标准应用于加纳一家三级医院的300名18至59岁的SNHL患者,并评估了该定义的适用性。大多数SNHL病例是可评估的(85.0%),并分配了1级LOC(84.3%);耳镜检查信息缺失(86.7%)是无法对病例进行分类的主要原因。评估者之间的LOC分类一致性为99.3%。具有电子病历(EMR)的病例比具有纸质记录的病例的可评估性低(30.9%对93.8%)。这些发现表明,SNHL定义将适用于资源有限环境中的回顾性确定和分类病例。开发EMR模板以记录耳镜检查结果可能会提高该医院确定SNHL的可行性。