Intensive care unit delirium (ICUD) is an acute cerebral dysfunction accompanied by a change of level of consciousness, disorientation, and cognitive dysfunction, typically occurring over a short duration ranging from hours to days and resulting from underlying medical causes. Family members may sometimes detect changes in consciousness earlier than medical staff. The Sour Seven Questionnaire is a tool to assist family members in screening for delirium, but there is currently no Chinese version. This study aimed to translate and cross-culturally debug the Sour Seven Questionnaire and test the effectiveness of the Chinese version in screening for ICUD by family members.
To create the Chinese version of the questionnaire, the questionnaire was first translated and then culturally debugged through expert consultation and cognitive interviews. Patients and their family members admitted to three ICUs in a Chinese hospital were selected to test the Chinese version of the Sour Seven Questionnaire and the results were compared with those of the validated and recommended Confusion Assessment Method for the intensive care unit (CAM-ICU) assessment.
A total of 190 ICU patients and their families were included in this study. Results of the CAM-ICU assessment showed that 73 (38.4%) patients developed ICUD compared to the 66 (34.7%) using the Chinese version of the Sour Seven Questionnaire, which had a Cohen’s kappa coefficient of 0.853, a sensitivity of 0.863, and a specificity of 0.974. The positive predictive value was 0.954 and the negative predictive value was 0.919.
The Chinese version of the Sour Seven Questionnaire is a valid assessment tool for helping families screen for ICUD, and it is effective in identifying altered consciousness in patients even during online visits.