Development of a clinically useful tool for Prakriti assessment

Abstract

Introduction: Prakriti assessment is of fundamental importance for research and standardization of clinical practice. The available tools for prakriti assessment are not intended to be used in a clinical setting, which demands a short and clinically flexible one. Methods:  3 selected tools were compared with a newly developed questionnaire. These were administered first in 100 healthy volunteers. Agreement analysis between these tools were done. The validation process was completed by running the new tool together with TNMC questionnaire in 150 more individuals who have some doshavriddhi. The results were discussed in an FGD involving clinicians and faculties. Results: The new tool has shown fair agreement with Ayusoft (kappa 0.434 and Spearman correlation 0.506) and TNMC (kappa 0.429 and Spearman correlation 0.454) questionnaires. And it showed week agreement with self-assessment tool (kappa 0.214 and Spearman correlation 0.407). Meanwhile self-assessment tool has poor agreement with both Ayusoft (kappa 0.172 and Spearman correlation 0.279) and TNMC (kappa 0.175 and Spearman correlation 0.244). Reliability was tested in a total of 250 individuals and a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.524 was obtained. Factor analysis was also done. In this total dataset, the new tool showed better agreement with TNMC questionnaire (kappa 0.581 and Spearman correlation 0.442). Conclusion: These results show that the new tool has potency to be run in large scale to study more variability among patients. This will add to the standardization of Ayurvedic diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic fields.