Performance of Automated Point-of-Care Respiratory Rate Counting versus Manual Counting in Children under Five Admitted with Severe Febrile Illness to Kisantu Hospital, DR Congo

Abstract

To improve the early recognition of danger signs in children with severe febrile illness in low resource settings, WHO promotes automated respiratory rate (RR) counting, but its performance is unknown in this population. Therefore, we prospectively evaluated the field performance of automated point-of-care plethysmography-based RR counting in hospitalized children with severe febrile illness (p > 0.05). Children without fast breathing were mostly correctly classified (negative percent agreement: 98.3%). In conclusion, in the present setting the automated RR counter performed insufficiently to facilitate the early recognition of danger signs in children with severe febrile illness, given wide limits of agreement and a too low positive percent agreement.

Keywords

• automated respiratory rate counting
• fast breathing
• point-of-care test
• low resource setting
• handheld pulse oximeter
• severe febrile illness