• Bárbara Antunes, Fliss Murtagh, Claudia Bausewein, Richard Harding, Irene J Higginson, and EURO IMPACT.
• Department of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, Cicely Saunders Institute, King's College London, London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: barbara.antunes@netcabo.pt.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2015 Feb 1;49(2):277-88.

ContextDepression is common among patients with advanced disease but often difficult to detect.ObjectivesTo assess the Palliative care Outcome Scale (POS) (10 items) against the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)-10 total score and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)-Depression subscale total score and determine if the POS has appropriate items to screen for depression among people with advanced disease.MethodsThis was a secondary analysis performed on five studies. Four psychometric properties were assessed: data quality, scaling assumptions, acceptability, and internal consistency (reliability). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine the area under the curve. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, false positive and negative rates, and positive and negative likelihood ratios were computed.ResultsThe overall sample had 416 patients from Germany and England: 144 had cancer and 267 had nonmalignant conditions. Prevalence of depression across the sample was 17.5%. Floor and ceiling effects were rare. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for POS items 7 and 8 summed, GDS-10 and HADS-Depression items varied: 0.61 (heart failure) and 0.80 (cancer). Two items combined (Item 7-feeling depressed and Item 8-feeling good about yourself) consistently presented the highest area under the ROC curve, ranging from 0.76 (95% CI 0.60, 0.93) (Germany, lung cancer) to 0.97 (95% CI 0.91, 1.0) (heart failure), highest negative predictive value, and lowest false negative rate. For the overall sample, the cutoff 2/3 presented a negative predictive value of 89.4% (95% CI 84.7, 92.8) and false negative rate of 10.6 (95% CI 7.2, 15.3).ConclusionPOS items 7 and 8 summed are potentially useful to screen for depression in advanced disease populations.Copyright © 2015 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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