Ww. Flemons et Ma. Reimer, DEVELOPMENT OF A DISEASE-SPECIFIC HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY-OF-LIFE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SLEEP-APNEA, American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 158(2), 1998, pp. 494-503
Citations number
19
Categorie Soggetti
Emergency Medicine & Critical Care","Respiratory System
The Calgary Sleep Apnea Quality of Life Index (SAQLI) was developed to
record key elements of the disease that are important to patients. Al
l items felt to influence the quality of life of these patients were i
dentified. Final questionnaire items were selected by interviewing 113
patients with sleep apnea and 50 snorers who rated each item on wheth
er it was a problem and the importance of it to their overall quality
of life. Items for the final questionnaire were selected based on the
rank order of the frequency x importance product. The rank ordering wa
s similar across strata of disease severity and between sexes. The Cal
gary SAQLI has 35 questions organized into four domains: daily functio
ning, social interactions, emotional functioning, and symptoms. A fift
h domain, treatment-related symptoms, can be added for clinical interv
ention trials to record the possible negative impacts of treatment. Th
e SAQLI has a high degree of internal consistency, face validity as ju
dged by content experts and patients, and construct validity as shown
by its positive correlations with the SF-36 and the improvement in sco
res in patients successfully completing a 4-wk trial of continuous pos
itive airway pressure. It includes items shown to be important to pati
ents with sleep apnea and is designed as a measure of outcome in clini
cal trials in sleep apnea.