• Intensive care medicine · Jul 1999

    Sensitivity and specificity of a screening test to document traumatic experiences and to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder in ARDS patients after intensive care treatment.

    • C Stoll, H P Kapfhammer, H B Rothenhäusler, M Haller, J Briegel, M Schmidt, T Krauseneck, K Durst, and G Schelling.
    • Dept. of Anaesthesiology, Klinikum Grosshadern, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany. c.stollmd@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
    • Intensive Care Med. 1999 Jul 1;25(7):697-704.

    ObjectiveMany survivors of critical illness and intensive care unit (ICU) treatment have traumatic memories such as nightmares, panic or pain which can be associated with the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In order to simplify the rapid and early detection of PTSD in such patients, we modified an existing questionnaire for diagnosis of PTSD and validated the instrument in a cohort of ARDS patients after long-term ICU therapy.DesignFollow-up cohort study.SettingThe 20-bed ICU of a university teaching hospital.PatientsA cohort of 52 long-term survivors of the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).Interventions And MeasurementsThe questionnaire was administered to the study cohort at two time points 2 years apart. At the second evaluation, the patients underwent a structured interview with two trained psychiatrists to diagnose PTSD according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) criteria. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire was then estimated and its specificity, sensitivity and optimal decision threshold determined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses.ResultsThe questionnaire showed a high internal consistency (Crohnbach's alpha = 0.93) and a high test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient alpha = 0.89). There was evidence of construct validity by a linear relationship between scores and the number of traumatic memories from the ICU the patients described (Spearman's rho = 0.48, p < 0.01). Criterion validity was demonstrated by ROC curve analyses resulting in a sensitivity of 77.0% and a specificity of 97.5% for the diagnosis of PTSD.ConclusionsThe questionnaire was found to be a responsive, valid and reliable instrument to screen survivors of intensive care for PTSD.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…