Validation of the Sinhala translation of ‘Low Anterior Resection Syndrome’ (LARS) Questioner

Abstract

Low Anterior Resection Syndrome (LARS) is a collection of troublesome symptoms that patients experience after surgical removal of the rectum for rectal cancer. The LARS questioner is a self-administered tool that has been widely used and validated in different settings after being translated to several languages. The study aims to validate the Sinhala translation of the said questionnaire. This will be a validation study conducted at the Professorial Surgical Unit of the North Colombo Teaching Hospital. English version of the LARS questionaire will be translated to Sinhala and backward translated by independent translators and assessed by an expert panel. Questioner will be given to patients who have undergone low anterior resection between years 2000 and 2015 as a self-administered questionnaire after obtaining written informed consent. Data analysis is based on the LARS scoring protocol for each question. Principal component analysis will be used to identify the underlying themes measured or captured by the questionnaire. The validity and reliability will be assessed by Cronabach's alpha, interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Pearson's correlation coefficient. A reliability of more than 0.7 is generally considered adequate prior to using a validated psychometric tool.