title: Validity and reliability of the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire in assessing health status in patients with chronic pulmonary aspergillosis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Chronic pulmonary aspergillosis (CPA) markedly reduces lung function through progressive lung destruction. To date, however, health status in patients with CPA has not been studied. This is due, in part, to a lack of adequately validated scales. The St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) is widely used for several chronic respiratory diseases, but not for CPA. We examined the reliability and validity of SGRQ in CPA.
  
  
  METHODS
  Eighty-eight patients with CPA completed the SGRQ, the Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36), and the Medical Research Council (MRC) dyspnea scale. Lung function and BMI were also measured. Pearson correlation, t test, analysis of variance, and their equivalents for nonparametric data and multivariate linear and binary analyses were used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The SGRQ components (symptoms, activity, and impact) and total scores achieved high internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.77, 0.91, 0.86, and 0.94), and SGRQ components had good intercorrelation (r ≥ 0.41; P &lt; .001) and correlated well with the total score (r ≥ 0.63; P &lt; .001). There were high, intraclass, correlation coefficients for the total SGRQ and its dimensions (≥ 0.92). The SGRQ scores showed significant correlation with the MRC dyspnea scale and SF-36 components and differentiated between all grades of shortness of breath and different bands of disease severity (P &lt; .05). In addition, patients with greater clinician-rated disease severity had more impairment of health status (P &lt; .006). CPA severity was independently associated with impairment in health status, and COPD comorbidity significantly affected the health status in patients with CPA.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SGRQ demonstrated a significant level of reliability and validity in measuring health status in CPA.
authors.affiliation: UK National Aspergillosis Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester, The University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, England; College of Medicine, Hadhramout University of Science and Technology, Hadhramout, Yemen.
authors.forename: Khaled
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Al-Shair
authors.affiliation: UK National Aspergillosis Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester, The University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, England.
authors.forename: Graham T W
authors.initials: GTW
authors.lastname: Atherton
authors.affiliation: UK National Aspergillosis Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester, The University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, England.
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.affiliation: UK National Aspergillosis Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester, The University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, England.
authors.forename: Georgina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Powell
authors.affiliation: UK National Aspergillosis Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester, The University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, England.
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Denning
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, The University of Manchester, Manchester, England. Electronic address: Ann.caress@manchester.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Caress
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055732:Pulmonary Aspergillosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive / Q000382:microbiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012129:Respiratory Function Tests; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires