Validation in Spanish of a screening questionnaire for the detection of psoriatic arthritis in patients with psoriasis

Objective. A patient self-administered questionnaire [PsA Screening and Evaluation (PASE)] has been developed and validated in English, but has not been tried in Spanish speaking populations. This study aimed to adapt and validate PASE in Spanish to screen Spanish speaking psoriasis patients for signs and symptoms of inflammatory arthritis. Methods. Initial translation from English to Spanish (forward translation) was performed by two independent translators and the resulting versions were synthesized during a consensus meeting. The questionnaire was tried in a pilot study and resulted in a change in the agreement scale for a frequency scale with wording adaptation [Spanish PASE (PASE-S)]. Results. One hundred and eleven patients were screened with PASE-S; 25 with PsA (without previous treatments), 23 with psoriasis, 22 with psoriasis and OA and 41 with OA without psoriasis. The diagnosis of psoriasis was performed by a dermatologist, and a rheumatologist determined the diagnosis of PsA or OA. Patients with PsA had statistically significant higher symptoms, function and total PASE-S scores compared with those without PsA. Receiver operator curves showed an area under the curve of 0.79 (95% CI 0.69, 0.89) for the total score. A cut-off value epsilon 34 showed sensitivity of 76%, and specificity of 74.4% for the diagnosis of PsA. Conclusion. The validated PASE questionnaire is a self-administered tool that can be used to screen for PsA among patients with psoriasis in a Spanish speaking population. PASE was able to distinguish between symptoms of PsA and OA.