AMS: Just how BAD do you feel?
May 13, 2007 19: 16 EST
Researchers and health care givers alike have recognized that the diagnosis and description of altitude sickness has always been an inexact science. There's no quick easy test to confirm AMS, which in most cases is a diagnosis of exclusion based heavily on the patient history. Therefore, it's difficult to study scientifically -- for instance when we want to study the efficacy of a drug on prevention and treatment of AMS, quantifying the patient's symptoms can be difficult at best. Most of us use the Lake Louise scale, but it has it's limitations. But some clever researchers took a familiar tool from other areas of medicine and studied it's application to AMS. Sounds promising! Here's their abstract:
Acute mountain sickness (AMS) is a common condition that affects people that ascend too rapidly to high altitude. It is typically assessed with the Lake Louise AMS Self-report Score (LLSelf) that uses a categorical numeric rating scale to answer five questions addressing AMS related symptoms, such as headache. A 100-mm visual analog scale (VAS) is commonly used to assess subjective phenomena such as pain, but this scale has never been used for the self-assessment of AMS. The purpose of this study was to compare a VAS score to the total LLSelf and to evaluate the test–retest and interrater reliability of the VAS when used as an assessment of
AMS. Participants (N 356) completed both the LLSelf and the VAS on the summit of Mt. Whitney (4419 m). There was a significant relationship (r 0.65, p 0.01) between the LLSelf and the VAS. Fifty-seven participants were randomly selected for reliability testing of the VAS. Both test–retest reliability and interrater reliability were high. The mean difference in the VAS score between tests was 1 mm, as was the difference between raters. These results demonstrate excellent reliability for the VAS as an assessment of AMS.
Read the entire article:
Wagner, Dale R., Kevin Tatsugawa, Daryl Parker, and Troy A. Young. Reliability and utility of
a visual analog scale for the assessment of acute mountain sickness. High Alt. Med. Biol. 8:27–31,
2007.
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