Multisomatoform disorder: agreement between patient and physician report of criterion symptom explanation.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the level of agreement between patients and expert physicians in whether criterion multisomatoform (MSD) symptoms are explained.


METHODS
We systematically collected reports from 280 primary care patients about whether they had suffered from any of 15 criterion MSD symptoms in the past month and whether they had received a medical explanation from a physician for positive criterion symptoms. The research team compared MSD symptom diagnoses derived from patient report with MSD symptom diagnoses derived from an expert physician report.


RESULTS
MSD symptom diagnoses derived from patient report had 98.7% sensitivity, 97.9% specificity, 89.3% positive predictive value, and 99.7% negative predictive value compared with MSD symptom diagnoses derived from an expert physician report. Analysis demonstrated that 15.0% of patients met symptom criteria for MSD, according to patient and physician report; 83.0% failed to meet symptom criteria for MSD, according to patient and physician report; 1.8% of patients met symptom criteria for MSD, according to patient report but not physician report, while 0.2% met symptom criteria for MSD according to physician report but not by patient report.


CONCLUSIONS
Patients demonstrated high agreement with a physician expert in somatization about whether criterion MSD symptoms are explained, suggesting revised screeners may accurately identify somatizing patients.
Rost
Kathryn M
KM
Department of Family Medicine, University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, Aurora, CO 80045-0508, USA. kathryn.rost@uchsc.edu
Dickinson
W Perry
WP
Dickinson
L Miriam
LM
Smith
Robert C
RC
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D010361:Patients; D010820:Physicians; D011320:Primary Health Care; D013001:Somatoform Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires