There are many tools for symptom assessment of patients with heart failure, but there is a lack of standardized evaluation studies on the quality of such tools, which brings difficulties to the selection of tools.
To evaluate the measurement property and methodological quality of symptom assessment tools in patients with heart failure, and to provide reference for relevant personnel to choose symptom assessment tools.
The Chinese and English databases such as PubMed, Embase, and CNKI were searched for relevant studies from the date of library construction to July 30, 2023. The Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) guideline was employed to evaluate the scale and form recommendations.
Eleven studies were included for quality assessment, including eight tools for assessing symptoms in patients with heart failure: Chinese version of Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale Heart Failure (MSAS-HF), Heart Failure Somatic Perception Scale (HF-SPS), M.D.Anderson Symptom Inventory Heart Failure (MDASI-HF), Symptom Status Questionnaire Heart Failure (SSQ-HF), Shortness of Breath in Heart Failure Instrument (SOB-HF), Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ), Chronic Heart Failure Assessment Tool (CHAT) and Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ). Regarding the measurement property, scales such as Chinese version of MSAS-HF, MDASI-HF, MLHFQ, and KCCQ were demonstrated a "sufficient" level of content validity. Conversely, HF-SPS, SSQ-HF, and SOB-HF were exhibited an "uncertain" level of content validity, while CHAT was categorized as having "insufficient" content validity. Finally, Chinese version of MSAS-HF and MLHFQ were recommended as level A, and the other six scales were recommended as level B.
Certainly, both Chinese version of MSAS-HF and MLHFQ demonstrate a remarkable level of reliability. Considering the distinct attributes of assessment tools, it is highly advisable to utilize Chinese version of MSAS-HF for the purpose of symptom assessment in patients suffering from heart failure.
Traditionally, open reduction with Kirschner wire fixation (ORKF) is used to treat paediatric patients with significantly displaced lateral humeral condyle fractures. However, in recent years, the use of closed reduction percutaneous pinning (CRPP) to treat lateral humeral condyle fractures in children has been increasingly reported. However, there is some controversy as to which surgical technique is more effective and safe.
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of CRPP and ORKF in paediatric patients with lateral humeral condyle fractures.
Chinese databases including CNKI, Wanfang Data, VIP and CBM and English databases including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science were searched from inception to 2023-01-01 for the case-control studies of CRPP and ORKF to treat the lateral humeral condyle fractures, the quality of the literature was evaluated and data were extracted. RevMan 5.3 software was performed to conduct a meta-analysis comparing the relevant efficacy and safety indexes of the two surgical techniques.
A total of 16 studies involving 1 165 cases were included for this meta-analysis. The results of meta-analysis indicated that CRPP was superior in status of surgical time (MD=-11.81, 95%CI=-15.04 to -8.58, P<0.000 01), intraoperative bleeding (MD=-3.36, 95%CI=-4.37 to -2.36, P<0.000 01), postoperative fracture healing time (MD=-3.92, 95%CI=-6.80 to -1.03, P=0.008), Kirschner wire rtention time (MD=-3.35, 95%CI=-6.33 to -0.38, P=0.03), and postoperative functional recovery of elbow joint (OR=0.44, 95%CI=0.25 to 0.76, P=0.006). The incidence of overall postoperative complications (OR=0.33, 95%CI=0.19 to 0.56, P<0.000 1) and superficial infections (OR=0.39, 95%CI=0.21 to 0.73, P=0.003) was lower than that in the ORKF group. However, there is no statistically significant difference in the deep infections, poor fracture healing, and ischemic necrosis of the lateral condyle between the two groups (P>0.05) .
CRPP was superior to ORKF in the treatment of pediatric lateral humeral condyle fractures, both in terms of efficacy and overall complications, but more high-quality studies are needed to further validate CRPP in terms of specific complications.
