Evaluation of French version of the Vulnerability to abuse screen scale (VASS), a elder abuse screening tool

The elder abuse is a major public health problem. In the world, almost 4 to 10% of people of more than 65 years would be abuse. The generalist practitioners report only 2% of the elder abuse. Furthermore, the evaluations of elder abuse screenings test found in the scientist literature were unsatisfactory. Evaluate the elder abuse screening capacities of the Vulnerability to abuse screen scale (VASS) in order to propose it to the doctors. VASS was translated in French. It's a quantitative and a forward-looking study whose the answers of people of more than 65 years old were analysed and compared in blind way to the answers of socials workers. 200 patients were included between March and May 2012 in the CHU of Cimiez, Nice. We found 104 patients in danger of abuse, 40 cases of abuse revealed by the socials workers, so 20% of abuses were reported by the gold standard. It means a sensibility of 90,9%, a specificity of 49,7% and a predictive value of 96,1% to a score of 1 to the test. The screening test VASS shown it useful to detect elder people in danger of abuse but a few discriminants and not adapted to patients who have cognitive pathologies. It's a screening tool usable by default, more sensitive than others tests in the scientist literature. However, these results ask the question of the useful of these tools of elder abuse screening in comparison with the education of doctors which made proofs of success in this subject.