Inappropriate Prescriptions in Older People—Translation and Adaptation to Portuguese of the STOPP/START Screening Tool

Luís Monteiro, Matilde Monteiro-Soares, Cristiano Matos, Inês Ribeiro-Vaz, Andreia Teixeira and Carlos Martins
Additional contact information
Luís Monteiro: CINTESIS—Centre for Health Technology and Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Matilde Monteiro-Soares: CINTESIS—Centre for Health Technology and Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Cristiano Matos: Department of Mathematics, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Inês Ribeiro-Vaz: CINTESIS—Centre for Health Technology and Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Andreia Teixeira: CINTESIS—Centre for Health Technology and Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Carlos Martins: CINTESIS—Centre for Health Technology and Services Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 11, 1-10

Abstract: Inappropriate prescribing, which encompasses the prescription of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) and potential prescribing omissions (PPOs), is a common problem for older people. The STOPP/START tool enables general practitioners, who are the main prescribers, to identify and reduce the incidence of PIMs and PPOs and appraise an older patient’s prescribed drugs during the diagnosis process to improve the clinical care quality. This study aimed to translate and validate the STOPP/START screening tool to enable its use by Portuguese physicians. A translation-back translation method including the validation of the obtained Portuguese version was used. Intra- and inter-rater reliability and agreement analyses were used in the validation process. A dataset containing the information of 334 patients was analyzed by one GP twice within a 2-week interval, while a dataset containing the information of 205 patients was independently analyzed by three GPs. Intra-rater reliability assessment led to a Kappa coefficient ( κ ) of 0.70 (0.65–0.74) for the STOPP criteria and 0.60 (0.52–0.68) for the START criteria, considered to be substantial and moderate values, respectively. The results of the inter-rater reliability rating were almost perfect for all combinations of raters ( κ > 0.93). The version of the STOPP/START criteria translated into Portuguese represents an improvement in managing the medications prescribed to the elderly. It provides clinicians with a screening tool for detecting potentially inappropriate prescribing in patients older than 65 years old that is reliable and easy to use.

Keywords: geriatric medicine; quality in health care; general medicine; STOPP/START (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/11/6896/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/11/6896/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:11:p:6896-:d:831779

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().