Medical utilization of Kiosk in the preoperative assessment of the ASA physical status: a pilot study

Background: The use of healthcare kiosk is increasing in the medical community. However, there are scares data on its use in a pre-operative clinic. Objective: The aim of this study is to validate an electronic questionnaire to assess the ASA physical status. Design: monocenter retrospective pilot study Setting: Tertiary hospital. Patients: 323 adults having a pre-operative visit prior to elective non-cardiac surgery. Main outcome measures: A questionnaire including 20 items (yes/no) was designed and inserted in the Kiosk. The ASA score was then retrospectively estimated by an anaesthesiologist not involved in preoperative visit, considering the total number of positive answers of the questionnaire inserted in the Kiosk. The answers to the questionnaire from the Kiosk were blinded to the anaesthesiologist performing the pre-operative face-to-face assessment. Agreement between both ASA scores provided from both anaesthesiologists was analysed using Cohen’s Kappa test (κ). Results: Agreement between ASA score estimated by kiosk answers and ASA score from face-to-face examination was substantially good with K=0.628 (P<0.001). Conclusion: Our electronic questionnaire is accurate in estimating patient’s physical status. A kiosk can be used to detect low risk patients in order to facilitate the preoperative assessment. However, it cannot replace a complete evaluation by a physician.