Identification of Seniors at Risk: transcultural adaptation for Brazilian Portuguese

To perform cross-cultural adaptation of the Identification of Seniors at Risk tool.

This methodological study was based on the guidelines process proposed by Beaton, attending the stages of translation, back-translation, judgment by judges and content validation of the Identification of Seniors at Risk tool. The goal of this tool is to allow the identification of the elderly at risk for hospitalization, composed of six dichotomous questions (yes or no) related to functional decline, comorbidities, previous hospitalization (last 6 months), visual impairment, significant changes in memory and polypharmacy. Two bilingual translators and 16 health professionals with hospital and academic performance in the fields of geriatrics and gerontology participated in the study.

Differences were observed between the initial translations and the final version. Changes were made to questions 1, 3, 4 and 6. In the last question, an item was modified to meet the Brazilian polypharmacy criterion. After the cross-cultural adaptation, the tool showed 100% agreement between the judges.

Brazilian Identification of Seniors at Risk has indexes of verbal comprehension and high content validity.