title: Disease-specific questionnaire for patients with a renal transplant.
abstract: A disease-specific questionnaire to assess the quality of life of renal transplant recipients was developed. A list of items of potential relevance to these patients was created and 50 transplant recipients rated the importance of each item. A combination of factor analysis and clinical judgment was then used to create the final questionnaire which consists of 25 questions in 5 dimensions (physical symptoms, fatigue, uncertainty/fear, appearance and emotions). The physical symptoms dimension is patient specific. All questions are scored on a 7-point Likert scale. The reproducibility of the questionnaire when it was administered to stable transplant recipients was high (intraclass correlation coefficients between 0.82 and 0.91 for the 5 dimensions). The scores of all dimensions except appearance improved 6 months after transplantation, when compared to pretransplantation scores. Patients who had a well-functioning graft (creatinine < 250 mmol/l) had higher scores than those with poorly functioning grafts. This questionnaire is easy to administer and is valid, reproducible in stable patients and responsive to change.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Laupacis
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pus
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Muirhead
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ferguson
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Keown
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors