There is a lack of valid and specific tools to measure chronic constipation severity in Brazil.
To validate the Constipation Scoring System for Brazilian spoken Portuguese.
Translation, cultural adaptation, and validation itself (reliability and convergent and divergent validation). Translation: definitive version from the original version’s translation and evaluation by specialists. Cultural adaptation: score content analysis of the definitive version, as an interview to patients. Interobserver reliability: application by two researchers on the same day. Intraobserver reliability: same researcher at different times, in a 7-day interval. Divergent validation: non-constipated volunteers. Convergent validation: two groups, good response to clinical treatment and refractory to treatment.
Cultural adaptation: 81 patients, 89% female, with mean age of 55 and seven years of schooling, and overall content validity index was 96.5%. Inter and intraobserver reliability analysis: 60 patients, 86.7% female, mean age of 56 and six years of schooling, and the respective intraclass correlation coefficients were 0.991 and 0.987, p<0.001. Divergent validation: 40 volunteers, 25 male, mean age of 49 years, and the mean global score was 2. Convergent validation of patients with good response to clinical treatment: 47 patients, 39 female, mean age of 60 and six years of schooling, and the pre- and post-treatment scores were 19 and 8, respectively (p<0.001). Convergent validation of refractory to clinical treatment patients: 75 patients, 70 female, mean age of 53 and seven years of schooling, and the global average score was 22.
The Constipation Scoring System (Índice de Gravidade da Constipação Intestinal) validated for the Brazilian population is a reliable instrument for measuring the severity of intestinal chronic constipation.
Patients with obesity present multiple comorbid psychiatric conditions and experience impairments in health-related quality of life. Reliable and valid tools that evaluate health-related quality of life are essential for clinical practice.
This study aimed to investigate the reliability and validity of the six-item Moorehead-Ardelt Quality of Life Questionnaire II among Brazilian patients with severe obesity.
We assessed 387 patients (mean age 43 years, 78.8% women, mean body mass index of 46.5 kg/m²) on the waiting list of a bariatric surgery center. Trained research assistants concurrently applied the Moorehead-Ardelt Quality of Life-II, the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale, and the Global Assessment of Functioning for assessing health-related quality of life, comorbid depressive symptoms, and patient functioning level, respectively.
The internal consistency of the Moorehead-Ardelt Quality of Life-II was considered acceptable. The total score was correlated with the severity of depressive symptoms and functioning level. The more body mass index increases, the more health-related quality of life worsens. The Moorehead-Ardelt Quality of Life-II presented a unidimensional structure.
The unidimensional Moorehead-Ardelt Quality of Life-II is a reliable and valid measure for evaluating health-related quality of life in Brazilian patients with severe obesity. The questionnaire allows to quickly assess the health-related quality of life of patients in different bariatric contexts, considering depression and functional level.
Developed by Surya MKT