Assessing medically unexplained symptoms: evaluation of a shortened version of the SOMS for use in primary care

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2010

Authors

fabiao, c (Author) Other; silva, mc (Author) FCUP; barbosa, a (Author) Other; fleming, m (Author) Other; rief, w (Author) Other

Journal

Title: BMC Psychiatry

Vol. 10

ISSN: 1471-244X

Publisher: Springer Nature

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 1 Citation

Scopus - 1 Citation

Scientific classification

FOS: Medical and Health sciences > Clinical medicine

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-003-6PE

DOI: 10.1186/1471-244X-10-34

Abstract (EN): Background: To investigate the validity and stability of a Portuguese version for the Screening for Somatoform Symptoms-2 (SOMS-2) in primary care (PC) settings. Methods: An adapted version of the SOMS-2 was filled in by persons attending a PC unit. All medically unexplained symptoms were further ascertained in a clinical interview and by contacting the patient's physicians and examining medical records, attaining a final clinical symptom evaluation (FCSE). An interview yielded the diagnosis of Clinical Somatization (CS) and the diagnosis of current depressive and anxiety disorders. Results: From the eligible subjects, 167 agreed to participate and 34.1% of them were diagnosed with somatization. The correlation between the number of self-reported and FCSE symptoms was 0.63. After excluding symptoms with low frequency, low discriminative power and not correlated with the overall scale, 29 were retained in the final version. A cut-off of 4 symptoms gave a sensitivity of 86.0% and a specificity of 95.5% on the FCSE and 56.1% and 93.6% at self-report. Stability in the number of symptoms after 6 months was good (k = 0.57). Conclusions: The 29 symptoms version of the SOMS-2 with a cut-off of 4 showed a high specificity and sensitivity, being reliable as a referral tool for further specialized diagnosis.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 10