Presentation of a psychodiagnostic inventory measuring disease-specific quality of life in kidney transplant recipients

Survival, quality of life (QOL) and economic aspects are the main parameter s by which therapy for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is evaluated. Until t oday there is a lack of inventories measuring disease-specific QOL in kidne y transplanted patients. Therefore, the end-stage renal disease symptom che cklist transplantation module (ESRD-SCL(TM)) a psychodiagnostic inventory m easuring the specific physical and psychological QOL of ESRD patients after renal transplantation, is presented. It contains six scales with 43 items: limited physical capacity (10 items), limited cognitive capacity (8 items) , cardiac and renal dysfunction (7 items), side effects of corticosteroids (5 items), increased growth of gum and hair (5 items), and transplantation- associated psychological distress (8 items). Considering responses of 458 E SRD patients after kidney transplantation the present study analyzed aspect s of reliability (internal consistencies: Cronbach's alpha = 0.85 scale 1 t o alpha = 0.76 scale 3) and validity (Pearson's correlation with the SF-36 Health Survey). In summary, the psychometric results support the usefulness of the questionnaire.