Abstract
An instrument in neurologic rehabilitation for the assessment of a person's clarity of consciousness must fulfill the need to provide the rehabilitation team with some information regarding the structuring of the rehabilitation process. The Vienna Vigilance Score is oriented toward cooperation within the rehabilitation team with the specific advantage of focus on the subject status of the patient on the basis of the dialogue. It does not use painful stimuli and is oriented toward the next developmental step of the rehabilitation process. The first extensive application of the Vienna Vigilance Score was carried out in a 3-year study of 38 children and adolescents. We report the comparison with other coma scales (Glasgow Coma Scale, Children's Coma Score, and Modified Glasgow Coma Scale) on 24 children and adolescents (1.4-16.8 years of age). The results showed satisfying statistical parameters: measuring range comparable with other scales; a Kendall tau correlation of .59 on both the Modified Glasgow Coma Scale and the Children's Coma Scale and of .66 on the Glasgow Coma Scale; a Spearman's rank order correlation of .70 to both the Modified Glasgow Coma Scale and the Children's Coma Scale and of .78 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. By accepting the Glasgow Coma Scale as a gold standard for classification of the level of coma, we can confirm satisfactory measuring qualities for the Vienna Vigilance Score. (J Child Neurol 2001;16:236-240).
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