MEASURING FUNCTIONAL INCAPACITY AND QUALI TY-OF-LIFE IN CARDIAC-FAILURE - TRANSCULTURAL ADAPTATION AND VALIDATION OF THE GOLDMAN, MINNESOTA-QUESTIONNAIRE AND DUKE-QUESTIONNAIRE

Cardiac failure has a big impact on the daily life of patients and thi s can be evaluated using quality of life questionnaires. The aim of th is study was to translate and adapt for the French population and test the validity of two quality of life self-administered-questionnaires : the Duke health Profile, the Minnesota Quality of Life Questionnaire in Cardiac Failure and one function capacity questionnaire, the Goldm an Specific Activity Scale. The questionnaires were translated and ret ranslated then submitted to a committee of experts : the final version was presented to 30 patients. The study of the quantitative propertie s of the three instruments was performed on a sample of 74, patients w ith cardiac failure to assess their validity and 26 stable patients af ter cardiac transplantation to test reproducibility. The results of th is study show that these three instruments are valid and reproducible and are comparable to the original documents : Cronbach's Alpha rangin g from 0.54 to 0.78 for the Duke, except for the social dimension, and from 0.73 to 0.93 for the Minnesota, except for its incapacity dimens ion, intraclass correlation coefficient > 0.6 in all dimensions. The v alidity of convergence with LVEF and the NYHA measured during hospital isation for decompensation was poor, except for the Goldman. The three instruments provided coherent information. The authors conclude that a structured method allows transcultural adaptation of instruments of evaluation of quality of life, the French version having comparable pr operties to the original documents : they may be used for clinical res earch.