Development and validation of sinhala version of the chronic liver disease questionnaire (CLDQ) for assessment of quality of life among cirrhotics

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Chronic liver disease (CLD) has a negative impact on patient quality of life (QOL). The Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire (CLDQ) is a validated tool which measures the Health Related Quality of Life (HRQL) among cirrhotics. CLDQ is easy to administer and measures six domains of QOL; abdominal symptoms, fatigue, systemic symptoms, activity, emotional functions and worry. It shows good correlation with severity of CLD. No tool had been developed previously to asses QOL among CLD patients in Sri Lanka. Aim of this study was to develop and validate a Sinhala version of the CLDQ (sCLDQ). METHODS: A standard method of forward and back-translation by bilingual translators was employed to develop the sCLDQ. Pilot testing was done with relevant linguistic and cultural adaptations. The final version was self-administered to stable CLD patients without significant comorbidities, together with the WHO BREF Sinhala version (a validated QOL assessment tool for any disease), for comparison. sCLDQ was re-administered 4 weeks later to study its internal consistency and reliability. The sCLDQ validation was assessed by Cronabach’s alpha, intraclass correlation coeffi cient (ICC) and Pearson’s correlation coeffi cient. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Forty eight patients participated in the validation process. The item total correlations of sCLDQ varied from 0.30 to 0.82 (except one item, 0.15). Overall Cronabach’s alpha was 0.92. Re-administration of sCLDQ to 15 patients yielded an ICC of 0.54 (p = 0.02). There was a signifi cant correlation (Pearson’s r = 0.34; p = 0.03) between sCLDQ and WHO BREF. Conclusion: sCLDQ was reliable and valid and would be a useful tool to assess QOL among cirrhotic patients in Sri Lanka.