Clinical application of Chinese Nanjing persistent vegetative state scale

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Neuroscience
• Clinical Assessment

Background:

• Characterizing consciousness in severe brain injury is challenging for clinicians.
• Accurate prognosis prediction for these patients remains a significant hurdle.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the psychometric properties and diagnostic utility of the Chinese Nanjing Persistent Vegetative State Scale (CNPVSS).
• To assess the CNPVSS's practicality in diagnosing disorders of consciousness in a Chinese clinical setting.

Main Methods:

• Investigated concurrent validity, inter-rater consistency, and diagnostic accuracy of CNPVSS against the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R).
• Assessed 380 patients with severe disorders of consciousness.

Main Results:

• CNPVSS demonstrated acceptable concurrent validity with significant correlation to CRS-R scores.
• CNPVSS showed moderate to high inter-rater and test-retest reliability.
• CNPVSS exhibited superior diagnostic sensitivity, correctly identifying patients misclassified by CRS-R, including 65 emerging from minimal consciousness and 2 in MCS misclassified as vegetative state.

Conclusions:

• The CNPVSS is a suitable measurement tool for assessing consciousness levels.
• CNPVSS is highly sensitive in differentiating minimally conscious state (MCS) from vegetative state (VS) patients.