The Short Anxiety Screening Test (SAST) is a brief instrument which is useful to screen for anxiety disorder in the elderly. It consists of 10 simple questions on how the patient feels. The authors are from Haifa, Israel.
The instrument consists of 10 questions.
Response
Points
never
1
rarely
1
sometimes
2
often
3
always
4
SAST =
= SUM(points for all 10 questions)
Interpretation:
• minimum score: 10
• maximum score: 40
SAST
Interpretation
<= 21
negative
22 – 23
borderline
>= 24
positive
Performance:
• Scores are significantly different between those who are anxious and those who are not.
• Sensitivity for anxiety 75.4%; specificity 78.7%.
• In depressed patients, the sensitivity was 83.3% and specificity 70.5%.
Limitations:
• Some items (pains, palpitations, dizziness) could be due to underlying disease. It might be interesting to test a modification of the test adding "not explained by an underlying disease."
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