Cultural adaptation and reproducibility of a dyspnea questionnaire in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients

Abstract

Objective: To adapt to Brazilian culture and to evaluate the reproducibility of the dyspnea management questionnaire (DMQ-30) in patients with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. Methods: Cultural adaptation was carried out, where the first translated version passed through a committee of judges, including the author of the questionnaire and applied in eight patients. The new version went through retrograde translation and again by the commission for certification of no change in the original sense. The reproducibility consisted of two applications of the questionnaire with a 15-day interval by the same examiner in 50 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients patients. We performed the correlation of the DMQ-30 questionnaire with the SF36, SGRQ and with HAD scale. To evaluate the reproducibility we used the intra-class correlation coefficient. For other correlations, we use the Pearson correlation coefficient. The significance level was established at 5%. Results: In the process of cultural adaptation the only altered term was "to play golf" for "to play pool". We found strong reproducibility of the total DMQ-30 (CCI 0.89), and in the dimensions: Dyspnea Intensity (CCI 0.82) Dyspnea anxiety (CCI 0.86), and Activity Avoidance (CCI 0.80). We observed moderate to strong correlation of SF36 with DMQ-30 (r = 0.72-0.40). We observed moderate to strong correlation of DMQ-30 with total SGRQ score (r = 0.69-0.41), and moderate correlation of DMQ-30 with HAD scale (r = 0.54). Conclusion: We were successful in the process of cultural adaptation with excellent reproducibility and good correlation with the SGRQ, SF36 and the HAD scale.