Non-English title

Introduction: We developed a questionnaire aimed at helping the positive diagnosis of recent benign external ankle sprains (EEBRC questionnaire) by community pharmacists. Objective: The objective was to test the diagnostic accuracy of the EEBRC questionnaire. Methods: The diagnostic accuracy of a subset of ten questions (items), which constituted the "initial examination" section of the EEBRC questionnaire, was tested versus data from a prospective randomized study enrolling 388 patients which were managed in an emergency department for an external ankle sprain (the TALOS cohort). In this cohort, after 1-year follow-up, the final diagnosis of mild, moderate and severe ankle sprain was made for 28%, 22% and 38% of patients respectively, 12% having an alternative diagnosis. Results: The 10-items questionnaire had 98.6% specificity; a comparable 98.4% specificity was found with a simplified 7-items questionnaire. The sensitivity of these questionnaires was 1.7% and 1.5% respectively. The best specificity/sensitivity ratio (86.7% and 29.2%, respectively) was associated with a 5-items version of the questionnaire. Conclusions: Based on the high specificity of the 7-items EEBRC questionnaire, a positive result rules in the diagnosis of a benign external ankle sprain with a low error risk. This questionnaire is not appropriate to diagnose and classify all categories of ankle sprain severity. Future studies deserve to be conducted to further refine this questionnaire and prospectively test its validation in the context of real life use.