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Disease-specific quality of life assessment in intermittent claudication: review
T Mehta1, A Venkata Subramaniam, I Chetter
1Academic Vascular Unit, Hull Royal Infirmary, UK.
Insights
Disease-specific quality of life (QoL) instruments for intermittent claudication (IC) show promise but require further validation. Current tools need more rigorous testing before clinical recommendation for assessing IC patient QoL.
Area of Science:
- Vascular Medicine
- Health Outcomes Research
- Quality of Life Assessment
Background:
- Intermittent claudication (IC) significantly impacts patient quality of life (QoL).
- Generic QoL instruments may not capture subtle yet important changes in IC patients.
- Disease-specific instruments offer potential for sensitive QoL assessment in IC.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review available disease-specific QoL instruments for IC.
- To evaluate these instruments based on validity, reliability, and responsiveness.
- To provide recommendations for clinical use in IC management.
Main Methods:
- Comprehensive literature search.
- Extensive bibliography review of relevant studies.
- Focus on disease-specific QoL and IC.
Main Results:
- Several disease-specific QoL instruments exist for IC.
- Notable instruments include Claudication Scale (CLAU-S), SIP(IC), and VascuQoL.
- The Walking Impairment Questionnaire (WIQ) measures walking ability, not QoL.
Conclusions:
- Many IC QoL instruments are newly developed with limited validation.
- Further research is needed to establish robust psychometric properties.
- No single disease-specific QoL instrument is currently recommended for widespread IC use.
Objectives:
intermittent claudication (IC) is a common condition that has a major impact on the patients' quality of life (QoL). Generic QoL instruments often lack sensitivity to detect small but clinically significant variation in QoL. Disease-specific instruments may overcome this problem. This study aims to review various disease-specific QoL instruments available for use in IC and make recommendations for clinical utilization based on validity, reliability and responsiveness.
Methods:
a detailed literature search and extensive bibliography review of all papers relating to disease-specific QoL and IC.
Results:
several disease-specific QoL instruments are available for use in patients with IC. The most notable of these are the Claudication Scale (CLAU-S), Sickness Impact Profile - Intermittent Claudication (SIP(IC)) and the VascuQoL. The Walking Impairment Questionnaire (WIQ) is an objective measure of the patient's walking ability and not a QoL instrument.
Conclusion:
many of the questionnaires are new and have undergone only a limited validation process. More work is required in this field before any one disease-specific QoL instrument can be recommended for use in patients with IC.