Pressure Injury Risk Assessment in Pediatric Intensive Care: A Prospective Validation Study of the Glamorgan Scale and Predictive Comparison with the Braden Q Scale

OBJECTIVE To validate the Glamorgan Scale and compare its predictive ability in assessing pressure injury risk among patients in a pediatric ICU (PICU) with that of the Braden Q Scale. METHODS A prospective cohort study was performed to validate the Glamorgan Scale and compare its predictive ability with the Braden Q Scale in a PICU population. A total of 83 patients admitted in the PICU between February and July 2020 met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study, leading to 639 measurements. The authors tested the psychometric properties of the Glamorgan Scale to validate whether the characteristics of the original version were preserved. To this end, reliability (internal consistency) and concurrent and predictive validity (sensitivity and specificity) were assessed. For the predictive comparison, the authors performed the same tests with the Braden Q Scale. RESULTS The predictive validity, as assessed by the receiver operator characteristic curve and calculation of the area under the curve, showed satisfactory performance for the Glamorgan Scale (0.77; CI, 0.72-0.82); the Braden Q Scale values were similar (0.78; CI 0.73-0.84). The Spearman correlation coefficient showed a strong correlation between the total scores of the Glamorgan Scale (ρ = -0.76; P <.01), corroborating its validation. CONCLUSIONS The Glamorgan Scale was validated and showed good accuracy and consistency for pressure injury risk assessment in critically ill pediatric patients in Brazil. Its accuracy was similar to that of the Braden Q Scale.