[Patient evaluation of postoperative recovery. An evaluation of the QoR scores in 577 patients].
BACKGROUND
In 1999 Myles and co-workers presented their quality of recovery score (QoR score) as a tool to evaluate postoperative recovery and to measure patient satisfaction. It was developed according to predefined psychological standards and its reliability and validity had been proven in large clinical trials. The aim of this study was to evaluate a German version of the QoR in a heterogeneous group of surgical patients.


METHODS
A total of 577 unselected patients completed a modified questionnaire. The response rate and time spent on completing the test were recorded. A stepwise multivariate regression analysis identified factors with significant impact on the QoR score. Other analyses were performed descriptively.


RESULTS
Of the patients 83% completed the questionnaire in a median time of 9 h after surgery without assistance. For 75% of these it took 2 min or less. The median QoR score was 15 (10(th)/90(th) percentile: 11/18). Cronbach's p (=0.63) and mean corrected item correlation (=0.32) were used as measures of internal reliability. Factors with impact on the QoR score were: period of time after surgery when performing the test, severity of surgery, sex, general vs local anaesthesia, duration of anaesthesia, and age.


CONCLUSIONS
The German translation of the QoR score is easily applicable to a heterogeneous surgical population and thus can be used as a valuable measure of quality of anaesthesia care and patient satisfaction.
Eberhart
L H J
LH
Universitätsklinik für Anästhesiologie und Intensivtherapie, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. eberhart@mailer.uni-marburg.de
Greiner
S
S
Geldner
G
G
Wulf
H
H
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000762:Anesthesia Recovery Period; D000765:Anesthesia, Conduction; D000768:Anesthesia, General; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*