Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the PRISMA-7 scale for European Portuguese

Background. Frailty is an age-associated biological syndrome and a predictor of multimorbidity outcomes, whose early recognition allows for the identification of those older patients at risk. The PRISMA-7 scale allows for the identification of frail older people.

Objectives. To make a cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the PRISMA-7 to the European spoken Portuguese language.

Material and methods. Cross-cultural adaptation by translation of the PRISMA-7 scale into European Portuguese, debriefing and back-translation to English. Application for intra-observer reliability assessment and validation by simultaneous and concurrent application of the Katz scale.

Results. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was of 0.420 and 0.409 after a re-test. Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation of 0.969 in the re-test operation in a sample of 64 older people (35 female). More than 3 affirmative answers were found for older people (p < 0.001), for a higher number of self-reported drugs taken, (p = 0.001), self-reported years of education (p = 0.001), higher values for those with less years of studies were found in the validation of the translated PRISMA-7 scale, in a purposive sample of 127 older people, 72 (56.7%) female. No differences were found between gender (p = 0.414) and for number of self-reported diseases (p = 0.258). A Spearman correlation of ρ = 0.477 (p < 0.001) between the total of the two scales was found.

Discussion. This comprehensive tool enables health care providers to discuss and architect more effective and efficient measures for these patients’ care, regardless of gender, socio-demographic factors, number of self-reported drugs taken and diseases.

Conclusions. The PRISMA-7 scale is now recommended to identify frail older people in the Portuguese community.