Validation of the Unesp-Botucatu pig composite acute pain scale (UPAPS) in piglets undergoing castration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To accurately assess pain and support broadly-based analgesic protocols to mitigate swine pain, it is imperative to develop and validate a species-specific pain scale. The objective of this study was to investigate the clinical validity and reliability of an acute pain scale (UPAPS) adapted for newborn piglets undergoing castration. Thirty-nine male piglets (five days of age, 1.62 ± 0.23 kg BW) served as their own control, were enrolled in the study and underwent castration in conjunction with an injectable analgesic administered one-hour post-castration (flunixin meglumine 2.2 mg/kg IM). An additional 10, non-painful female piglets were included to account for the effect of natural behavioral variation by day on pain scale results. Behavior of each piglet was video recorded continuously at four recording periods (24 h pre-castration, 15 min post-castration, 3 and 24 h post-castration). Pre- and post-operative pain was assessed by using a 4-point scale (score 0-3) including the following six behavioral items: posture, interaction and interest in surroundings, activity, attention to the affected area, nursing, and miscellaneous behavior. Behavior was assessed by two trained blinded observers and statistical analysis was performed using R software. Inter-observer agreement was very good (ICC = 0.81). The scale was unidimensional based on the principal component analysis, all items except for nursing were representative (rs ≥ 0.74) and had excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha ≥ 0.85). The sum of scores were higher in castrated piglets post-procedure compared to pre-procedure, and higher than in non-painful female piglets confirming responsiveness and construct validity, respectively. Scale sensitivity was good when piglets were awake (92.9%) and specificity was moderate (78.6%). The scale had excellent discriminatory ability (area under the curve > 0.92) and the optimal cut-off sum for analgesia was 4 out of 15. The UPAPS scale is a valid and reliable clinical tool to assess acute pain in castrated pre-weaned piglets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".