Translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation of a Latin American Spanish version of the ID Migraine screening test.

Objective: To translate, culturally adapt, and validate a version of the ID Migraine into Latin American Spanish.

Background: Although still considered a common diagnosis, half of the patients with migraine in Latin America experience diagnostic delay. The ID Migraine is a test developed in 2003 as a valuable tool for the early diagnosis of migraine at the primary care level; however, there is no validated Spanish or culturally adapted version for the Spanish-speaking population.

Methods: This is an analytical, translation, and test-validation study. We performed back translation and cross-cultural adaptation. The Latin American Spanish version ID Migraine MX was applied to headache clinic patients from March 2021 to January 2022 to perform a validation process against the gold standard: blinded expert diagnosis according to the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition (ICHD-3), criteria.

Results: One hundred seventeen patients from the headache clinic of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery of Mexico City were screened. We found 62/117 (53%) patients positive for screening with ID Migraine MX, and 47/117 (40%) positive for migraine according to ICHD-3 criteria. A sensitivity (95% CI) of 0.91 (0.80-0.97), specificity of 0.73 (0.61-0.82), positive predictive value of 0.694 (0.57-0.794), and negative predictive value of 0.93 (0.83-0.97) were obtained. The positive likelihood ratio was 3.38 (2.27-4.99), and the negative likelihood ratio was 0.12 (0.04-0.30). After calling the patients 1 month after the first interview, the calculated Kappa test-retest was 0.75 (p = 0.001).

Conclusion: A translated and cross-culturally adapted version into Spanish of the ID Migraine was obtained, with a diagnostic performance similar to the original instrument. Clinicians may use this test at the first level of care to reduce the rate of misdiagnosis and the time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis and treatment of migraine.