Abstract:

Acute upper respiratory tract infection (AURI) is the most prevalent infectious disease among children. However, standardized methods for evaluating symptoms have not garnered the necessary attention. Standardized assessment plays a pivotal role in evaluating the natural history of diseases and the efficacy of medications, particularly in clinical trials. Currently, in clinical trials focusing on pediatric AURI, unverified subjective symptom rating scales or self-developed Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) syndrome scales are frequently employed. These tools exhibit limited scientific validity and lack comparability across different studies. This article systematically reviews and compares four validated efficacy assessment scales for pediatric AURI, analyzing their structural frameworks, reliability, validity, and applicable scenarios, thereby providing evidence-based guidance for researchers and clinicians in selecting evaluation indicators. Additionally, this paper notes that TCM research still relies on syndrome rating scales without unified standards. It is proposed that future efforts should integrate evaluation frameworks from both TCM and Western medicine, and develop age-specific, multi-dimensional efficacy evaluation systems for pediatric AURI, with the aim of enhancing the standardization and clinical application value of related research.

Key words: acute upper respiratory tract infection, efficacy evaluation scale, integration of traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, child