Expert-driven weighting of pressure injury risk factors for wheelchair users: A Delphi study.
Clémence Paquin, Marie-Ève Lamontagne, François Routhier
PMID 40953084WHAT IT FOUND
Experts ranked 39 pressure injury risk factors for wheelchair users.
Immobility, previous pressure injury, malnutrition, inability to perform pressure relief, and sensory impairment were the most critical. These weights are expert opinion, not a validated clinical tool.
Key findings
01The five highest-rated risk factors were immobility, current or past pressure injury, malnutrition, no possibility of pressure relief manoeuvres, and sensory perception impairment.
02Experts identified 39 factors that reached consensus, creating separate lists for all wheelchair users and those with spinal cord injury.
03The study assigns weights to risk factors to inform a future scoring system, but the score itself has not yet been tested in practice.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study reports expert opinion, not clinical outcomes. The weights do not predict actual pressure injury incidence. Participants were primarily from North America and Europe, which may limit the generalizability of the risk profiles to other healthcare systems. Occupational therapists and physiotherapists made up the majority of the panel, while nurses and other professions were underrepresented. The proposed scoring system has not been validated against a gold standard or tested in clinical practice.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Ministère de l’économie, de l’innovation et de l’énergie du Québec and the Réseau d’évaluation et de l’innovation en santé durable du CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale. Authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use these weights as a validated clinical scoring tool. The study establishes expert consensus on risk factor importance but has not tested whether these weights accurately predict pressure injury development in patients.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →