In a recent systematic review published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN), a group of researchers has highlighted the measures medical professionals take to screen for depression among patients with kidney failure.
According to the research group at the American Society of Nephrology, their thorough review of databases such as PsycINFO and Medline led to the assessment of several tools used to identify depressive symptoms among patients.
“We included studies assessing patients with kidney failure and compared a tool to a clinical interview or another validated tool (e.g., Beck Depression Inventory-II),” the co-authors explained in their CJASN report.
“We abstracted data related to sensitivity and specificity, positive and negative predictive value, and the area under the curve. We evaluated the risk of bias using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2.”
Of the 16 studies evaluated by the research group, all of which assessed the effectiveness of depression-based questionnaire tools, the Beck Depression Inventory-II performed the best and was the best-studied tool.
“There is limited research evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of most screening tools for depression in patients with kidney failure, and existing studies may not be generalizable to US populations,” the co-authors also stated in their findings.
“Future research should target widely used, free tools such as the Patient Health Questionnaire 2 and the Patient Health Questionnaire 9,” the authors concluded.
