Evaluating Different Pediatric Emergency Rulers in a Manikin Study - How Fast and Correct Are They

Medical team members (consultants, residents and nurses) of the department of Anaesthesia at the University Children's Hospital Zurich were asked to participate in this study. If they were not familiar with one of the three devices written informed consent was obtained and the participant included in this study. This exclusion criteria was necessary to prevent a bias by already knowing where to find the information of interest.

The pediatric emergency rulers investigated were:

The electronic Pediatric Emergency Ruler (ePER) is based on the Continuous Length-based Algorithm for Weight & Age Rating (CLAWAR). This digital algorithm is based on gender-specific Swiss length-weight and Swiss length-age growth charts and uses the 50th percentile to estimate the patient's body weight and age. CLAWAR was recently published and showed a higher accuracy compared to a conventional emergency tape. A smartphone application (APP) was programmed based on CLAWAR and is utilized in the ePER. CLAWAR, the APP and ePER were developed by the department of Anaesthesia at the University Children's Hospital Zurich.

The "Paulino System" (PS; Paulino-System & Altonaer Werbewerkstatt, Hamburg, Germany) utilizes a ruler with 27 length-based weight categories for a body length from 44 to 151 cm. Separate from this ruler weight estimation ruler drug dosing, sizes of medical equipment, and vital parameters for each of the 27 weight categories can be found in a color-coded booklet.

The "Paediatric Emergency Ruler" (PaedER; Alpha 1 Werbedesign e.K., Falkenberg, Germany) is a paediatric emergency tape certified for clinical use in Europe and applicable for patients with a body length between 44 and 140 cm. PaedER is grouped in 11 length based weight categories to assist estimation of patients' body weight, to suggest drug dosing (mg and ml) for the most common emergency drugs and to recommend adequate sizes of medical equipment and norm-values for vital signs. The basic idea is identical to the of the Broselow Luten tape.