[Screening tools of somatization in general and somatoform disorders in primary care]

In this article a critical review concerning screening tools to assess medically unexplained symptoms, in primary care settings is made. Once the relevance of that screening is justified, the authors analyse: 1) the somatization dimensions presented by multi-dimensional tools; 2) the measures that primarily assess the severity of symptoms; 3) the available inventories of medically unexplained symptoms. The psychometric characteristics of each screening tool are analysed, the samples and the gold standard measures used in each validation study are referred to, as well as the cut-offs, if previously calculated. At present six screening tools for physical symptoms have a Portuguese translation, four of them do not discriminate explained and unexplained symptoms, another one was not validated in the Portuguese context and finally the SOMS-2 which discriminates unexplained symptoms and has been validated for use in primary care.