Background: Anxiety disorders remain undiagnosed in routine clinical practice in up to two thirds of affected patients with epilepsy despite their significant impact on medical and psychosocial outcomes. The study objective was to translate and validate the German 8-item "brief Epilepsy Anxiety Survey Instrument" (brEASI) to facilitate effective screening for the presence of anxiety disorders in German-speaking patients.
Methods: After expert translation into German, the brEASI was completed by consecutive adult inpatients with epilepsy hospitalized for seizures at an academic reference epilepsy center. Patients also completed the Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory for Epilepsy (NDDI-E), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7) for external validity, and underwent a standardized interview (Mini-DIPS-OA) as a gold standard to determine the presence of an ICD-10 anxiety disorder (generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, agoraphobia, and social phobia). Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) were calculated to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the brEASI, including the associated area under the curve (AUC) statistics to determine the potential of the brEASI to identify ICD-10 anxiety disorders diagnosed by interview. For comparative purposes, these analyses were also conducted for the GAD-7.
Results: Of 80 recruited adult inpatients with epilepsy, 18 (23 %) were found to have a current anxiety disorder through standardized interview. In this study, both brEASI and GAD-7 showed a better diagnostic performance at a cutoff of >5 than at the previously reported cutoff values of >6 and >9, respectively. The AUC of the German brEASI was outstanding (AUC = 0.90, 95 % confidence interval (CI) = 0.82-0.96) for detecting all anxiety disorders and excellent for detecting non-GAD disorders (AUC = 0.85, CI = 0.76-0.92) at a cutoff of >5. At this optimal cutoff of >5 the brEASI demonstrated better sensitivity and specificity (89 % and 84 %) for identifying anxiety disorders than the GAD-7 (83 % and 74 %). The final German version of the brEASI is free to download at https://www.v-neuro.de/veroeffentlichungen/.
Conclusion: The German version of the brEASI represents a valid and reliable epilepsy-specific anxiety screening instrument. A positive screening result should be followed by further diagnostic procedures. Appropriate therapeutic steps should be initiated if the presence of an anxiety disorder or other psychiatric disorders is confirmed.
Keywords: Depression; Psychiatric comorbidity; Questionnaire; Screening.
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