The purpose of this study was to assess the extent of the pH paper-pH meter-concordance with a lab pH metre for measurement of gastric pH in children suffering from neurological impairment and gastrostomy pipe disease (GERD). The pH was determined using 3 techniques: the pH paper, the manual pH metre and the laboratory’s pH metre in this prospective observational study. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), Bland-Altman and kappa statistics were evaluated for agreement amongst approaches. Of the 43 patients who contributed 67 stomach samples, the ICCs between handheld and laboratory metres were 0.75, between paper and lab metres was 0:69 and between handheld and paper were 0.69. A mean difference of −0.03 pH units and 0.17 pH units between the paper and laboratory metre was found between the analysis of the Bland-Altman portable metre and the laboratory metre. For a pH of 4, the kappa coefficients between the portable metres and lab metres were 1.0 and 0.9 between the paper and the lab metre.
Both the pH metre and pH paper tests indicate a well-related correlation between the gold standard and the laboratory pH metre, indicating that they are usable in the care centre tests for the monitoring of gastric pH in neurologically impaired and GERD tubular-feeding children.
