Emergency weight estimation in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the Northern Territory: Are the current methods accurate?

Objective During a paediatric emergency, it is often impractical to weigh a child. Many resuscitative measures require a child's weight; therefore, estimation is often used. Different methods are available to do this, usually based on a child's age or length. The accuracy of these methods has not been validated in A boriginal and T orres S trait I slander children from remote communities. The objective of this study was to determine how well these paediatric emergency weight estimation methods predict weight for this group of children. Method A retrospective descriptive study using the measured weights and heights of A boriginal and T orres S trait I slander children from remote locations across the N orthern T erritory ( NT ) was used. The weight estimation methods chosen to evaluate were the APLS , ‘ B est G uess’, L uscombe and N elson's formulae, A rgall's modification, the B roselow® and S andell® tapes, and the World Health Organization standard reference growth charts. Adjusted R ‐squared values for each method are reported, and agreement was measured in terms of mean percentage error ( MPE ). Results A total of 2102 children were included. The length‐based methods performed the best. The B roselow T ape had the highest adjusted R ‐squared value at 0.8886 in all age groups. The APLS , L uscombe and A rgall's methods were the worst performing methods. The B roselow® T ape was also the best performing in terms of accuracy and precision, with an MPE of −0.35% (95% CI −0.82–0.1). Conclusion Our data support the use of the B roselow® T ape as the recommended method when estimating weight in an emergency for remote A boriginal and T orres S trait I slander children in the NT for the 0–5 year age group.