Psychometric properties of a Swedish version of the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire in a Chronic Heart Failure population.
BACKGROUND
Valid assessments of health-related Quality of Life (HRQL) are increasingly important in chronic, incurable conditions, such as chronic heart failure (CHF).


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the psychometric properties of a Swedish version of the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ) in hospitalized patients with decompensated CHF.


RESULTS
The KCCQ and SF-36 were administered to patients (n=118) with CHF at baseline and then 1 (n=51) and 4 months (n=83) after admission. The Swedish version of the KCCQ appears to have acceptable convergent and discriminant validity for all suggested health domains. Cronbach's alpha and test-retest reliability met for most of the scales the minimum of 0.70. Known-groups comparison indicated that the KCCQ discriminated between patients differing in the New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification (criterion validity). The KCCQ was also more responsive to changes in the NYHA classification as compared with the SF-36. However, KCCQ has some weakness in the response distributions for two questions and the convergent validity in one question.


CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the KCCQ is a valid and reliable instrument in a Swedish CHF population. It yields reliable and valid scores and is quite responsive to clinical change.
Institute of Health and Care Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy at Göteborg University, Sweden. Harshidaben.patel@vgregion.se
Harshida
H
Patel
Inger
I
Ekman
John A
JA
Spertus
Scott M
SM
Wasserman
Lars-Olof
LO
Persson
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000451:nursing; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden