Practical evaluation of 5 portable diffusers used in anti-cancer chemotherapy: the benefits of using the ‘bootstrap’ method to interpret the results

The aim of this study is to assess the performance of 5 portable diffusers against various technical and practical criteria. The evaluation was conducted over two days on patients receiving 5-fluorouracile who volunteered to help our study. The diffusers tested were: Infusor® (Baxter), Dosifuser® (Asept InMed), Accufuser® (NM-Medical), BalloonJector® (SLB) and Easypump® (BBraun). An evaluation chart combined the assessment criteria of Oncology nurses (3 criteria), patients (7) and independent nurses (2). Preparation technicians had their own specialchart (14 criteria).

To assess the significance of these results, the first stage of analysis consisted of simulating, on the basis of raw data, 100 bootstrap observations for each criterion. Of these 100 observations, the probability that a response was, on average, greater than another was estimate for 10,000 bootstrap replications (using the Datapilot programme). We thus obtained rankings of the diffusers for each category of observer, then an overall ranking.

We collected 34 assessment forms from patients and nurses and 20 from preparation technicians. Using the bootstrap method we obtained the following results:

On the basis of technical criteria, and after extrapolation using the bootstrap method, the Infusor diffuser was the highest-rated overall, and the top-rated by 3 of the 4 classes of evaluators. This statistical approach helps compensate for small sample size during such equipment tests.

Diapos-Evaluation pratique de 5 diffuseurs