Evaluation of the RFIPC, a disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, in Swedish patients with ulcerative colitis.
BACKGROUND
We wanted to characterize a Swedish version of the Rating Form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patient Concerns (RFIPC) with regard to validity, reliability, and responsiveness.


METHODS
Two hundred and three consecutive patients with ulcerative colitis were studied. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) was measured with the disease-specific questionnaire, the RFIPC, and a general questionnaire, the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP). Concerns about general well-being were also reported. Disease activity was measured by means of symptom cards, laboratory tests, and two clinical indices for disease activity.


RESULTS
Test-retest reliability using Spearman's r (rs) was 0.79, and internal consistency measured with Cronbach's alpha was 0.95. RFIPC had a fair correlation with concerns about general well-being (rs = 0.69, P < 0.001). There was also a stronger correlation with another measure of HRQOL, the overall SIP score (rs = 0.43), than with measures of disease activity such as stool frequency (rs = 0.28) and sigmoidoscopic grading (NS). The group of patients in relapse had a higher RFIPC sum score than patients in remission (P = 0.001). Measures of HRQOL had a low correlation with disease activity and did not respond to changes in disease activity.


CONCLUSIONS
The Swedish version of the RFIPC is a valid and reliable measure of HRQOL. The SIP and the RFIPC have a good discriminative ability between groups of patients in remission and in relapse. However, they do not seem to be useful in predicting the disease activity or change in disease activity over time in the individual patient.
Hjortswang
H
H
Dept. of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden.
Ström
M
M
Almeida
R T
RT
Almer
S
S
D000328:Adult; D003093:Colitis, Ulcerative / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D013548:Sweden