title: Cross-cultural adaptation of the lumbar North American Spine Society questionnaire for Italian-speaking patients with lumbar spinal disease.
abstract: METHODS
  A cross-cultural adaptation and cross-sectional study of a sample of lumbar spine patients, with a subsample followed prospectively for retest reliability.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To assess the Italian version instrument reliability and validity.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The orthopaedic outcome measurements have been usually focused on objective parameters as radiograph measures or other technical aspects. However, these parameters are weakly related with outcomes that are more relevant to patients as functional status and symptoms. In the last ten years, the patient-oriented measures have become an important aspect of spinal clinical outcome evaluation. The most common instruments to assess patient perspective are self-administered questionnaires that must be validated by a widely accepted process to evaluate reliability and validity, which are fundamental for every instrumental measure.
  
  
  METHODS
  The North American Spine Society (NASS) questionnaire was culturally adapted for Italian-speaking people following the Guillemin criteria. The Italian version was tested on 74 consecutive patients who were referred to the authors' department and suffered from low back pain with leg irradiation. The results were compared with other validated patient-oriented measures. Forty-eight-hour retests were performed on a subsample of 45 patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The questionnaire was favorably accepted by patients. The lumbar spine pain and disability and neurogenic symptoms subscales showed a high correlation with other patient-oriented measures, as hypothesized, and it also showed good values on test-retest.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The questionnaire should be considered for patient health status monitoring and for clinical trials.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Orthopedics, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy. rpadua@mclink.it
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Padua
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Padua
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ceccarelli
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Romanini
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bondì
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zanoli
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Campi
mesh_terms: D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy / Q000208:ethnology; D017116:Low Back Pain / Q000208:ethnology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009656:North America; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012955:Societies, Medical; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires