gms | German Medical Science

81st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

12.05. - 16.05.2010, Wiesbaden

Interrater reliability of the ENTAS (Ear-, Nose- and Throat-Activity Score)

Meeting Abstract

  • corresponding author presenting/speaker Ulrike Garske - Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrenheilkunde, Kopf- und Halschirurgie der CAU, Kiel, Germany
  • author Andrea Haack - Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrenheilkunde, Kopf- und Halschirurgie der CAU, Kiel, Germany
  • Olga Beltrán - Department of Otolaryngology, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y, Mexico City, Mexico
  • L.F. Flores-Suárez - Department of Otolaryngology, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y, Mexico City, Mexico
  • J.P. Bremer - Universität zu Lübeck, Poliklinik für Rheumatologie, Vaskulitiszentrum UKSH & Rheumaklinik Bad Bramstedt,, Lübeck, Germany
  • Peter Lamprecht - Universität zu Lübeck, Poliklinik für Rheumatologie, Vaskulitiszentrum UKSH & Rheumaklinik Bad Bramstedt,, Lübeck, Germany
  • author Petra Ambrosch - Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrenheilkunde, Kopf- und Halschirurgie der CAU, Kiel, Germany
  • author Martin Laudien - Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrenheilkunde, Kopf- und Halschirurgie der CAU, Kiel, Germany

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. 81st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Wiesbaden, 12.-16.05.2010. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2010. Doc10hno094

doi: 10.3205/10hno094, urn:nbn:de:0183-10hno0940

Published: July 6, 2010

© 2010 Garske et al.
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Outline

Text

Introduction: The nasal mucosa is affected in more than 80% of the patients with WG. Therefore a reliable evaluation of the activity by an ENT specialist is mandatory. So far a suitable scoring system is missing. The proposed ENTAS is an advancement of the questionnaire introduced by Paulsen et al. 2001 in international agreement. The present study describes the interrater reliability of the evaluation of the global endonasal activity score.

Patients and methods: Four experienced (previous examination of more than 50 WG-patients) and four unexperienced (contact to <50 WG-patients) examiners assessed endonasal activity on the basis of 50 endoscopic endonasal photos of WG-patients. Activity was scored as no, mild, moderate or high. The interrater reliability was calculated by Cohen’s Kappa (κ).

Results: The reliability of the global score between experienced and unexperienced examiners is κ=0.1. If “none” and “mild” as well as “moderate” and “high” are grouped Cohen’s Kappa is κ=0.5. In the group of the experienced examiners the reliability of evaluation by the global score is κ=0.3, by the dichotic evaluation κ=0.6.

Conclusion: The interrater reliability of the global score between experienced and unexperienced examiners as well as in the group of the experienced examiners shows a poor concordance with κ<0.4. A good reliability is achieved by using the dichotic evaluation of the activity. The experienced examiners show a better agreement. Further studies will demonstrate if training of the examiners and a structured evaluation may improve the interrater reliability.