Original articleInfant Stool Form Scale: Development and Results
Section snippets
Scale Development
Daily digital photographs were taken from all stools of preterm and term infants during their hospital stay in an academic and nonacademic hospital in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, between August and October 2006. Stools of otherwise healthy infants without metabolic, congenital diseases or gastrointestinal disorders requiring surgery were photographed. Photographs were taken at daytime by 2 researchers with a digital camera (zoom lens, original magnification × 4 and × 7.2 megapixels) while
Baseline Characteristics
A total of 907 digital photographs of infant stools were taken of which 555 could be analyzed. The other photographs (n = 442) were duplicates or of poor quality and were therefore not useful for further analysis. Images of 555 stools of infants with a median GA of 31 weeks (range: 25-42) and with a median age of 15 days after birth (range: 1-120) were analyzed (Figure 3 and Figure 4; available at www.jpeds.com). Sixty of the participating infants (11%) were term born. Of the premature born
Discussion
On the basis of the analysis of more than 500 digital infant stool photographs, we were able to develop the stool form scale for premature and term-born infants aged up to 120 days after birth. Validity of this scale was supported by the good to excellent interobserver and intraobserver agreement scores. With this stool scale, no difference was found in stool characteristics between preterm and term-born infants. Significant differences in stool amount were found between BF and FF infants, but
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2021, EClinicalMedicineCitation Excerpt :We also asked if their under-five has had blood in their stool in the past 14 days and, if so, if and where they sought care [15]. Participants in the pictorial arm were shown the Amsterdam Stool Chart (Appendix 3) and asked to select all the pictures resembling the stools observed from their under-five over the past 14 days [22]. If loose or watery stools were reported, we asked how many times the child had this stool type on the worst day and how many days this stool type lasted.
The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest, and there were no study sponsors involved in this project.