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French translation and validation of the sarcopenia screening tool SARC-F

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Abstract

Introduction

The purpose of the present study is to translate and validate into French the SARC-F questionnaire, a simple and easy screening tool for sarcopenia.

Materials and methods

The translation process has been divided into two consecutive parts: (1) the translation of the questionnaire from English to French and its language validation (inter-rater reliability and test–retest reliability); (2) the clinical validation of the French SARC-F to assess its performance (sensitivity, specificity, predictive positive value and predictive negative value) in a cohort of elderly Belgian subjects against 7 existing definitions of sarcopenia.

Results

The translated French version of the SARC-F demonstrated an excellent inter-rater reliability, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.90 (95% CI 0.76–0.96), as well as excellent test–retest reliability, with an ICC of 0.86 (95% CI 0.66–0.94). Afterwards, 306 subjects took part in the clinical validation of the French version of the SARC-F questionnaire. The results showed that sensitivity of the tool ranged from 22.1 to 75.0%, depending on the definition used for the diagnosis of sarcopenia, and the specificity ranged from 84.9 to 87.1%. Moreover, all positive predictive values were always below 50%; the lowest negative predictive value was 68.1%, and the best one reached approximately 99%.

Conclusions

The results are in line with the psychometric performance found in the initial English validation of the SARC-F and seem to indicate that this screening tool can detect with precision the absence of sarcopenia, but seems less precise in affirming the presence of this geriatric syndrome.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Pr. Stéphane Schneider from the “Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nice, Pôle Digestif, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, Faculté de Médecine, Nice, France” for his involvement in the project and for being a member of the expert panel in charge of reviewing the translation and discussing the conceptual adequacy and clarity of the translation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Unit in Public Health, Epidemiology and Health Economics (URSAPES), WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Aspects of Musculo-Skeletal Health and Aging, University of Liège, Avenue Hippocrate 13, CHU Bât B23, 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Charlotte Beaudart, Médéa Locquet, Jean-Yves Reginster & Olivier Bruyère

  2. Department of Sport and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Liege, Liège, Belgium

    Stephen Bornheim

Authors
  1. Charlotte Beaudart
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  2. Médéa Locquet
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  3. Stephen Bornheim
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  4. Jean-Yves Reginster
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  5. Olivier Bruyère
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Contributions

CB, OB and JYR conceived the study. OB, CB and SB were translators involved in the translation process. ML and CB collected the data among the SarcoPhAge population and performed the statistical analyses. The first draft of the manuscript was written by both CB and ML. All the authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Charlotte Beaudart.

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Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. CB and ML are both supported by a fellowship from the FNRS (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique de Belgique—FRSFNRS—http://www.frs-fnrs.be).

Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant competing interests to declare.

Ethical approval

The research protocol and subsequent amendments were approved by the Ethics Committee of the University Teaching Hospital of Liège.

Informed consent

Informed written consent was given by all participants.

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Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 12 kb)

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Beaudart, C., Locquet, M., Bornheim, S. et al. French translation and validation of the sarcopenia screening tool SARC-F. Eur Geriatr Med 9, 29–37 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41999-017-0007-1

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