Dalhousie Dyspnea and Perceived Exertion Scales: Psychophysical properties in children and adolescents

• Dalhousie Pictorial Scales performed as well as Borg CR10 scale for rating dyspnea and perceived exertion in exercising children and adolescents.
• Both scales conformed to a power law, but use of a delay term improved fit and meaningfulness of the derived psychophysical function.
• Choice of scale is less critical than recognition of inter-individual variability in trajectory with increasing work.

Children and adolescents vary widely in their perception of, or capacity to rate, sensations during exercise using the Borg scale. We sought to measure sensory-perceptual responses obtained using Dalhousie Dyspnea and Perceived Exertion Scales in 79 pediatric subjects during maximal exercise challenge and to determine the psychophysical function relationship(s). Concurrent validity was assessed by canonical plots of mean ratings on either scale, which showed showing very good correlations for perceived leg exertion vs work, and dyspnea vs ventilation. Both scales yielded similar results with respect to goodness of fit regardless of whether data was fitted to a power or quadratic function provided a delay term was included. The quadratic model fixed the exponent of the power law at 2 but, unlike a power model, allowed characterization of individual responses that increased and then plateaued. Dalhousie Dyspnea and Perceived Exertion Scales offer an alternative to Borg scale during exercise in pediatric populations.