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Ocular Motor Score (OMS): a clinical tool to evaluating ocular motor functions in children. Intrarater and
Monica Olsson1,2, Kristina Teär Fahnehjelm1,3, Agneta Rydberg1,4
1Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Ophthalmology and Vision, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden.
Insights
The Ocular Motor Score (OMS) demonstrates high reliability for evaluating children's eye movements. This new clinical tool shows good intrarater and inter-rater agreement, making it a valuable assessment for ocular motor functions.
Area of Science:
- Ophthalmology
- Pediatric Neurology
- Clinical Assessment
Background:
- Ocular motor function is crucial for visual development and daily activities in children.
- Standardized clinical assessment tools are needed to reliably evaluate these functions.
- The Ocular Motor Score (OMS) is a novel protocol comprising 15 non-invasive parameters.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the intrarater and inter-rater reliability of the Ocular Motor Score (OMS) protocol.
- To determine the consistency of OMS scoring by a single examiner over time.
- To assess the agreement in OMS scoring among different examiners.
Main Methods:
- Forty children aged 4-10 years underwent assessment using the OMS protocol.
- Examinations were videotaped to facilitate repeated scoring.
- Intrarater agreement was assessed by the primary author scoring twice (clinic and video).
- Inter-rater agreement was evaluated by three independent raters scoring from videotapes.
Main Results:
- High overall intrarater agreement (88%) and inter-rater agreement (80%) were observed for the OMS protocol.
- Intrarater agreement for subtests remained above 65% for all parameters.
- Three subtests showed inter-rater agreement at or below 65%.
Conclusions:
- The Ocular Motor Score (OMS) protocol exhibits high intra- and inter-rater reliability in clinical settings.
- Specific subtests, including saccades and smooth pursuit, presented greater scoring challenges for raters.
- OMS is a promising tool for consistent evaluation of pediatric ocular motor functions.
Purpose:
Ocular motor score (OMS) is a new clinical test protocol for evaluating ocular motor functions in children and young adults. OMS is a set of 15 important and relevant non-invasive ocular motor function parameters derived from clinical practice. The aim of the study was to evaluate OMS according to intrarater and inter-rater agreement.
Methods:
Forty children aged 4-10 years, 23 girls median age 6.5 (range 4.3-9.3) and 17 boys median age 5.8 (range 4.1-9.8) were included. The ocular motor functions were assessed and scored according to the OMS protocol. The examinations were videotaped. To obtain the intrarater agreement, the first author examined and scored the children twice, first in the clinic and 2 weeks later by watching the videotape. To obtain the inter-rater agreement, three other raters independently scored the ocular motor function of the children by watching the videotapes.
Results:
The overall observed intrarater agreement was 88%, and the observed inter-rater agreement between the three raters was 80%. For none of the subtests was there an observed intrarater agreement lower than 65%. Three of the subtests had an observed inter-rater agreement of 65% or below.
Conclusion:
Overall there was high observed intra- and inter-rater agreement for the OMS test protocol. Subtests such as saccades and smooth pursuit were more difficult for raters to score similarly according the clinical OMS test protocol.

