[Validation of the VISA-A-G questionnaire for German-speaking patients suffering from Haglund's disease].
BACKGROUND
The VISA-A questionnaire is currently the only valid, reliable, and disease specific patient administered questionnaire for research in Achilles tendinopathy. To perform multinational and multilingual investigations this instrument was already adapted to several languages. According to the "guidelines for the process of cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures" we already translated and validated the VISA-A questionnaire for patients with Achilles tendinopathy.


OBJECTIVE
To cross-culturally adapt and validate the VISA-A Questionnaire for German-speaking patients suffering from Haglund's disease.


METHODS
The VISA-A-G questionnaire was tested for reliability, validity, and internal consistency in 39 Haglund's disease patients and 79 asymptomatic persons. For concurrent validity the VISA-A-G was compared with the Curwin and Stanish tendon grading system and with the Percy and Conochie classification system for the effect of pain on athletic performance. VISA-A-G results in Haglund's disease were additionally compared with VISA-A-G results obtained from Achilles tendinopathy patients and with VISA-A results presented in the international literature.


RESULTS
ICC for the VISA-A-G questionnaire in conservatively treated Haglund's disease patients was 0.96. In asymptomatic students and joggers ICC was 0.97 and 0.60. When correlated with the grading system of Curwin and Stanish and with the Percy and Conochie classification rho was -0.95 and 0.94, respectively. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) for the total VISA-A-G scores of the patients was calculated to be 0.87. Compared with VISA-A-G results obtained from Achilles tendinopathy patients there was no relevant difference discernible. Compared with VISA-A results presented in the original publication no difference was found statistically for students, healthy people, conservative, and preoperative patients, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
This study confirms that the VISA-A-G is a valid and reliable measure for German-speaking patients suffering from Haglund's disease.
Sportmedizinisches Institut Frankfurt am Main. lohrer@sport.uni-frankfurt.de
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D000125:Achilles Tendon; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D052256:Tendinopathy / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*