German Version of SARC-F: Translation, Adaption, and Validation

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: German; SARC-F; sarcopenia; screening; translation; validation.