Anesth Analg 2006;102:648
© 2006 International Anesthesia Research Society
doi: 10.1213/01.ANE.0000190744.69115.C6
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Reliability Measurement with Unreliable Method
Leopold Eberhart, MD,
Christian Arndt, MD,
Thomas Cierpka, MD,
Judith Schwanekamp, MD,
Hinnerk Wulf, MD, and
Caroline Putzke, MD
Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany, eberhart{at}staff.uni-marburg.de
In Response:
We thank the Editor for the opportunity to reply to Drs. Araghi and Marashi’s letter. Their main criticism is the assumed lack of "synchronization" of the methodology between our trial and that used in the original study of Khan et al. (1).
One can speculate whether creating identical study conditions with respect to exclusion criteria, personal experience of all anesthesiologists, but also anesthesia technique, technical equipment, and approach for endotracheal intubation—the paper of Khan et al. (1) nearly completely lacks this important information—would have yielded in more positive results for the Upper Lip Bite test.
What is most important is not to simply repeat a trial that has already been performed but to test its applicability, reliability, and validity under "real life" conditions, and the latter may differ from institution to institution. If a test turns out to be not robust enough for clinical use in daily practice under slightly different conditions, it is of no value for the anesthesia community.
Reference
- Khan ZH, Kashfi A, Ebrahimkhani E. A comparison of the upper lip bite test (a simple new technique) with modified Mallampati classification in predicting difficulty in endotracheal intubation: a prospective blinded study. Anesth Analg 2003;96:595-9.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
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