Hola a tod@s, my dear friends.

Sometimes, people known and admire by me publish multicenter articles with much effort and work. And the truth is that one can´t leave smiling and feeling proud.

Today we talk about Nacho Latorre, from the ICU of Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro-Majadahonda, and for sure about all the collaborators from 20 Spanish ICU of 14 Hospitals that have made possible the research Psychometric validation of the behavioral indicators of pain scale for the assessment of pain in mechanically ventilated and unable to self-report critical care patients recently published in Medicina Intensiva.

Congratulations, making #enfermeríavisible (nursing visible).

 

As we all know, more than 50% of the critical ill patients have pain or experience it during their stay in the ICU, and we all know its consequences.

Also we know that protocolized and systematic evaluation of pain, agitation and delirium has shown less incidence of them, the days of mechanical ventilation and ICU stay.

And every day, we treat intubated people with difficulty to communicate, so we need to apply behavior scales of pain to help us. Until now, the scales recommended were the Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS) and the Critical Care Pain Observation Tool (CCPOT).

In 2011 ESCID was validated, created by Nacho and his team and developed after Campbell scale (which is not validated by studies in critical patients and should not be applied to patients on mechanical ventilation, parameter that ESCID includes).

 

A new study was carried out, this time multicenter observational and prospective, participating 286 critical patients with medical or postsurgical pathology under mechanical ventilation without capacity of communicate, and their level of pain before and after a painful procedure (mobilization and aspiration) and after a non painful procedure was measured  by 2 observers simultaneously, using the BSP and ESCID.

After 4386 observations, it was showed a high correlation between both scales and a high concordance between the observers, with a good internal consistency in the five parameters evaluated by the scale.

The study concludes that the ESCID scale is valid and reliable for measure the pain in patients with critical medical and postsurgical pathologies, so we encourage you to monitor their pain daily by using it in your daily routine

Congratulations to the authors, and… Thank you so much!.

Happy Thursday,
Gabi