DEVELOPMENT OF A DISEASE-SPECIFIC HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY-OF-LIFE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SLEEP-APNEA

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.