Pavlaković G, Züchner K, Zapf A, Bachmann C G, Graf B M, Crozier T A, Pavlaković H
Center for Anesthesiology, Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine, University Clinic Göttingen, Robert-Koch-Strasse 40, D-37099 Göttingen, Germany.
Muscle Nerve. 2009 Aug;40(2):257-63. doi: 10.1002/mus.21270.
Various factors can influence thermal perception threshold measurements and contribute significantly to unwanted variability of the tests. To minimize this variability, testing should be performed under strictly controlled conditions. Identifying the factors that increase the variability and eliminating their influence should increase reliability and reproducibility. Currently available thermotesting devices use a water-cooling system that generates a continuous noise of approximately 60 dB. In order to analyze whether this noise could influence the thermal threshold measurements we compared the thresholds obtained with a silent thermotesting device to those obtained with a commercially available device. The subjects were tested with one randomly chosen device on 1 day and with the other device 7 days later. At each session, heat, heat pain, cold, and cold pain thresholds were determined with three measurements. Bland-Altman analysis was used to assess agreement in measurements obtained with different devices and it was shown that the intersubject variability of the thresholds obtained with the two devices was comparable for all four thresholds tested. In contrast, the intrasubject variability of the thresholds for heat, heat pain, and cold pain detection was significantly lower with the silent device. Our results show that thermal sensory thresholds measured with the two devices are comparable. However, our data suggest that, for studies with repeated measurements on the same subjects, a silent thermotesting device may allow detection of smaller differences in the treatment effects and/or may permit the use of a smaller number of tested subjects. Muscle Nerve 40: 257-263, 2009.
多种因素会影响热感觉阈值测量，并显著导致测试出现不必要的变异性。为了将这种变异性降至最低，测试应在严格控制的条件下进行。识别增加变异性的因素并消除其影响应能提高可靠性和可重复性。目前可用的热测试设备使用水冷系统，会产生约60分贝的持续噪音。为了分析这种噪音是否会影响热阈值测量，我们将使用静音热测试设备获得的阈值与使用市售设备获得的阈值进行了比较。受试者在一天中用随机选择的一种设备进行测试，7天后用另一种设备进行测试。在每次测试中，通过三次测量确定热、热痛、冷和冷痛阈值。采用Bland-Altman分析评估不同设备获得的测量结果的一致性，结果表明，对于所有测试的四个阈值，两种设备获得的阈值的受试者间变异性相当。相比之下，静音设备检测热、热痛和冷痛的阈值的受试者内变异性显著更低。我们的结果表明，用这两种设备测量的热感觉阈值相当。然而，我们的数据表明，对于在同一受试者上进行重复测量的研究，静音热测试设备可能能够检测到治疗效果中更小的差异和/或可能允许使用更少数量的受试对象。《肌肉与神经》40: 257 - 263, 2009年。
