Published Lyme meningitis treatment studies are limited by outcome measures that cannot capture day-to-day differences in clinical improvement. Our goal was to use expert consensus to develop a daily measurement instrument for assessing clinical improvement in children with Lyme meningitis. We assembled a panel of 24 nationally recognized Lyme disease experts to develop a pediatric daily symptom measurement instrument. Experts responded to four rounds of surveys, receiving feedback about the previous round prior to each subsequent round with anonymity for participants and responses. Using modified Delphi methods, we established a novel Lyme meningitis outcome instrument. The final Pediatric Lyme Meningitis Symptom Measurement instrument includes five items: headache (Likert scale), neck pain/stiffness (Likert scale), fever (yes/no), light sensitivity (yes/no) and vision problems (yes/no). We defined three consecutive days with a symptom score of zero as the minimum to define clinical improvement. Using expert consensus, we developed a novel Pediatric Lyme Meningitis Symptom Measurement instrument to measure treatment response daily for children with Lyme meningitis enrolled in clinical studies.

已发表的莱姆脑膜炎治疗研究受到结局指标的限制，这些结局指标无法捕获临床改善方面的日常差异。我们的目标是使用专家共识来开发一种日常测量工具，以评估莱姆脑膜炎患儿的临床改善情况。我们召集了一个由24名国家认可的莱姆病专家组成的小组，以开发一种儿科日常症状测量仪器。专家们对四轮调查做出了回应，在随后的每一轮调查之前都收到了有关前一轮调查的反馈，但参与者和回复均不具名。使用改良的Delphi方法，我们建立了新型的莱姆脑膜炎预后仪。最终的儿科莱姆脑膜炎症状测量仪器包括五个项目：头痛（Likert量表），颈部疼痛/僵硬（Likert量表），发烧（是/否），光敏感度（是/否）和视力问题（是/否）。我们将症状评分为零的连续三天定义为定义临床改善的最小值。根据专家的共识，我们开发了一种新颖的儿科莱姆脑膜炎症状测量仪器，用于每天对参加临床研究的莱姆脑膜炎患儿的治疗反应进行测量。