Abstract
Objectives
Translation, adaptation, and validation of the German version of the SARC-F for community-dwelling
older adults in Germany.
Design
Cross-sectional.
Setting and Participants
117 community-dwelling outpatients with a mean age of 79.1 ± 5.2 years were included
in the study; 94 (80.4%) of them were female. Sixty-three (53.8%) had a positive SARC-F
score of ≥4 points. According to the definition of sarcopenia from the European Working
Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2), 8 patients (6.8%) were identified as
sarcopenic and 57 (48.7%) as probable sarcopenic.
Methods
According to EWGSOP2, probable sarcopenia was defined for patients with reduced hand
grip strength (women: <16.0 kg; men: <27.0 kg) and/or impaired chair-rise time (both
genders: >15 seconds). Patients with additional low skeletal muscle index were classified
as sarcopenic (women: <5.5 kg/m2; men: <7.0 kg/m2). Translation and cultural adaption was composed of 7 different steps that were in
general based on the guidelines put forward by the World Health Organization. Validation
include test-retest and the inter-rater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient)
as well as internal consistency (Cronbach alpha). Furthermore, sensitivity, specificity,
positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of the SARC-F were calculated.
Receiver-operating characteristic analysis was performed to calculate the area under
the curve.
Results
The translated and culturally adapted version of the SARC-F for the German language
has shown excellent inter-rater reliability and good test-retest reliability. The
internal consistency is acceptable. Sensitivity (63%) and specificity (47%) for sarcopenia
is low. For detecting patients with probable sarcopenia, the SARC-F in the German
version has shown 75% sensitivity and 67% specificity.
Conclusions and Implications
Because of a low sensitivity for detecting sarcopenia but an acceptable sensitivity
for identifying probable sarcopenia, the German version of the SARC-F is a suitable
tool for case finding of probable sarcopenia.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 21, 2020
Footnotes
M.D. and U.F. contributed equally to the study.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
