ArticleBMC family practice2004
The inter-observer agreement of examining pre-school children with acute cough: a nested study.
Article in BMC family practice, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Clinical pathways for chronic cough in children.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2014Pooled it
- Reliability of Physical Examination Findings in Youths Diagnosed With Pneumonia.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Article
- Improving the Diagnosis, Management, and Outcomes of Children with Pneumonia: Where are the Gaps?Frontiers in pediatrics · 2013Review
- Using vital signs to assess children with acute infections: a survey of current practice.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2008Article
- Defining childhood severe falciparum malaria for intervention studies.PLoS medicine · 2007Article
- Validation of a clinical rule to predict complications of acute cough in preschool children: a prospective study in primary care.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2007Article
- Cough quality in children: a comparison of subjective vs. bronchoscopic findings.Respiratory research · 2005Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe presence of clinical signs have implications for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the inter-observer agreement of clinical signs in pre-school children presenting to primary care.
methodsA nested study comparing two clinical assessments within a prospective cohort of 256 pre-school children with acute cough recruited from eight general practices in Leicestershire, UK. We examined agreement (using kappa statistics) between unstandardised and standardised clinical assessments of tachypnoea, chest signs and fever.
resultsKappa values were poor or fair for all clinical signs (range 0.12 to 0.39) with chest signs the most reliable.
conclusionsPrimary care clinicians should be aware that clinical signs may be unreliable when making diagnosis, prognosis and treatment decisions in pre-school children with cough. Future research should aim to further our understanding of how best to identify abnormal clinical signs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.