Evaluation of results agreement of integrated visual and auditory continuous performance test in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder children with Conners' parent test after treatment with methylphenidate

Introduction: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder. Two methods to diagnose ADHD are to use cognitive tests such as the Integrated Visual and Auditory (IVA) continuous performance (CPT) and the Conners' parent tests. In this study, a new method under IVA-CPT was investigated on ADHD children, and the degree of synchronization with the Connors test of parents was measured. Method: This study was conducted with a pretest-posttest design. Twenty ADHD patients were evaluated to enroll. The patients received methylphenidate® at a dose of 60 mg/day for six weeks. Before and after treatment, subjects were examined with IVA-CPT test. After the sixth week, the rate of response to treatment and improvement of the patients was also evaluated by the Conners' parent test. Results: The mean age was 10.30 ± 2.5 and 55% of patients were boys. none of the Conners' parent and IVA-CPT test scores had a substantial agreement before, during, and after the intervention. Furthermore, there was no significant agreement between the diagnosis based on the Conners' parent scale and the IVACPT test before ( p  = 0.969) and after ( p  = 0.917) treatment. Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that there is no significant agreement between the diagnosis of ADHD based on the Conners' parent scale and the CPT-IVA test before and after treatment with methylphenidate. Also, no significant relationship was observed between the subscales of these two tests. These results suggest that physicians should expect to find a lack of consistency between the scores provided by these measures and should be conservative of their use in clinical settings.