RELIABILITY AND REPRODUCIBILITY OF THE DI GEST QUESTIONNAIRE FOR DIGESTIVE SYMPTOMS

''Digest'' is a international effort to record the prevalence of diges tive symptoms in the general population. The international questionnai re was tested in German translation for reliability and reproducibilit y. The questionnaire consists of 14 symptoms, which were investigated by standardized questions. Each symptom was described in 3 dimensions: frequency, severity and impact on daily activities. 127 successive pa tients referred for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy were interviewed twice by a young assistant and by an experienced gastroenterologist be fore the diagnostic workup. A further 72 volunteers served as a contro l group. In these volunteers no upper gastrointestinal endoscopy was p erformed. Reliability and reproducibility were calculated by the Spear man rank test. The most frequent diagnoses were: organic diseases (oes ophagitis [28], gastric ulcer/erosive gastritis [32] and duodenal ulce r [18]); functional diseases (dyspepsia [32] and irritable bowel syndr ome [14]). Reproducibility was satisfactory by accepted standards (rho >0.7). Reliability was very good, with r-values for each symptom betw een rho 0.96-0.99. The impact on daily activities was highest in the c ase of heartburn or localized upper gastrointestinal pain, and lowest in the case of belching and fullness. The questionnaire can be easily administered by the non-specialist and the results discriminate well b etween functional/organic diseases and healthy people, thanks to excel lent reproducibility and reliability.