A comparative analysis of the SF-12 and the SF-36 among ischaemic heart disease patients

This paper investigated whether the SF-12 could replace the SF-36 in the me asurement of health status among ischaemic heart disease patients. The SF-3 6 and SF-12 were administered to 105 cardiac patients. The SF-36 summary sc ores were strongly correlated and similar to the SF-12 summary scores. Also , the SF-12 scores were as powerful as the SF-36 summary scores in discrimi nating between subgroups of patients categorized according to their self-re ported health status or angina classification. It is suggested that when th ere is a need to collect routine information about cardiac patients' genera l physical and mental health, the SF-12 is preferable to the SF-36 because of its brevity and acceptability to patients.