Translation and validation into Portuguese language of the medication regimen complexity index.
BACKGROUND
The complexity of pharmacotherapy is a result of a multiplicity of prescribed regimen factors, including the number of different drugs in the regimen, the number of dosage units per dose, the total number of prescribed doses per day and administration instructions. The Medication Regimen Complexity Index (MRCI) is a specific, reliable and valid tool used to measure the complexity of pharmacotherapy, originally developed in English language.


OBJECTIVE
Transcultural translation and validation of this tool into Brazilian Portuguese.


METHODS
A cross-sectional study was developed with 95 type-2 diabetes patients, receiving multiple medications. The validation process included translation into Portuguese, back-translation and pre-test of the tool, creating a new version called the Pharmacotherapy Complexity Index (PCI). The psychometric parameters were assessed, including convergent validity, discriminant validity and reliability (interclass and test-retest correlation).


RESULTS
The complexity of pharmacotherapy measured by the MRCI-Brazil had an average score of 15.7 points (SD=8.36). MRCI-Brazil showed significant correlation with the number of medications (r=0.86; p<0.001) and age of patients (r=0.28, p=0.005). Interrater reliability analysis found an intra-class correlation (ICC) of 0.99 (p<0.001) and test-retest correlation was of 0.997 (p<0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
The results have shown that the Brazilian version of the MRCI presents adequate validity and reliability, and may be useful in clinical practice and research involving the analysis of the drug regimen complexity.
Melchiors
Ana Carolina
AC
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brasil.
Correr
Cassyano Januário
CJ
Fernández-Llimos
Fernando
F
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001938:Brazil; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003469:Culture; D003924:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 / Q000188:drug therapy*; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004334:Drug Administration Schedule; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007004:Hypoglycemic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D014177:Translations
D007004:Hypoglycemic Agents