Relationship between Maternal Employment and 9-12 Month-Old Infants’ Growth Indexes in Ahwaz (2017)

Valid, reliable, short, sensitive and accurate tool is needed to diagnose pain in dementia patients. This study aimed to determine the psychometric properties and diagnostic accuracy of short-form Persian version of Doloplus-2 (P-Doloshort) in pain assessment in elderly with dementia.

In this cross-sectional study, 100 elderly were selected using convenient sampling from private clinics and nursing homes in Kashan in 2018-19. Construct validity was determined by exploratory factor analysis, known-groups approach and convergent validity. Also, reliability was evaluated by internal consistency, equivalence, and stability. P-Doloplus-2 and P-Doloshort were used as the reference standard and the index test, respectively. Data were analyzed by SPSS-v16 using independent T-Test, linear regression, Pearson and intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), Cronbach's alpha, ROC curve, and diagnostic test parameters.

Factor analysis identified the tool as a single-factor; it was able to explain 65.851% of total variance. P-Doloshort was able to differentiate between two groups with and without painful underlying diseases (P<0.0001). There was a positive and significant correlation between P-Doloshort score with P-Doloplus-2 score (r=0.975, P<0.0001) and PACSLAC-II-IR score (r=0.0001, P<0.0001). Cronbach's alpha, ICC and standard error of measurement were 0.898, 0.891 and ±1.183, respectively. The relative frequency of minimum and maximum possible score was less than 15%. At the cut-off point of 2.5, area under ROC curve, sensitivity, specificity, and overall diagnostic accuracy were estimated 0.985, 0.956, 1.000 and 0.970, respectively.

P-Doloshort can be used as a valid, reliable, sensitive and accurate tool for pain assessment in elderly with dementia.