Título

A COMPARISON BETWEEN GONIOMETER AND A SMARTPHONE PHOTO EDITOR IN ABNORMAL HEAD POSITION EVALUATION: A PILOT STUDY

Objetivo

To compare the measurement of the head position with the goniometer and the smartphone’s photo editor to evaluate the reproducibility and accuracy of the application

Método

This is an observational, comparative and non-randomized study that evaluated the use of a cell phone photo editor, its applicability and accuracy compared to the conventional method, which is the use of a goniometer to measure head tilt in vertical axis (head rotated right and left). A pilot project was carried out with 8 people, of which 4 were patients, and the other 4 simulated head deviation on the vertical axis. The study was carried out with Brasília’s Ophtalmological Hospital (HOB) patients, in the years 2020 and 2021 who fit the inclusion criteria and accepted to participate freely. 2 measurements were taken with the goniometer and the average of these measurements was obtained. A photo of the head position was also taken with the cell phone and it was measured with the goniometer. Then these photos were evaluated with the photo editor application on the cell phone. The results from the conventional goniometer and photo editor were compared and statistically analyzed.

Resultado

The research reliability level is 95%, with a minimum sample of 7 people (n). The percentage of error reached is 1.02%. Converting the percentage numbers to degrees shows that there was a variation of up to 2.00º. Table 1. Mean of the angles obtained with the two measurement methods Figures 1 and 2. Model of how to use the Photo Editor of the cell phone | Model of the Goniometer use

Conclusão

There was a low difference between the measurements of the two forms of angle measurement. It’s possible to infer that the photo editor can be used instead of the traditional goniometer in these cases without compromising accuracy/