[Symptom's questionnaire for gastroesophageal reflux disease]

Structured questionnaires are valuable instruments to measure the impact of specific diseases in patient's quality of life through a score and they are available such abroad as in Brazil. Nevertheless, questionnaires based on gastroesophageal reflux disease symptoms are not available in Portuguese.

To develop and validate in Portuguese a specific questionnaire for gastroesophageal reflux disease symptoms.

Velanovich's original questionnaire was translated, one question about "regurgitation" symptom was included and the vocabulary was adjusted to be understood to the scholarity level of the analyzed population. The "face validity" to each question was evaluated by the members of a multidisciplinary panel and a symptom's questionnaire for gastroesophageal reflux disease was developed. The questionnaire was applied to patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease symptoms confirmed by prolonged pH esophageal monitoring. The reproducibility, the comprehension, the time spent to fill out the questionnaire and the correlation coefficient to Johnson-DeMeester's score were measured.

The "face validity" was considered satisfactory by the panel and the questionnaire was applied to 124 patients, consecutively. The comprehension of the questionnaire and the time less than 5 minutes to fill out them were observed in all patients (100%). Reproducibility for 10 patients in two different occasions showed a high intra-class correlation coefficient of 0,833. The correlation to the Johnson-DeMeester's score was null.

This study showed that the symptom's questionnaire for gastroesophageal reflux disease has "face validity", excellent reproducibility, easy comprehension and was quickly answered by patients. The correlation with Johnson-DeMeester's score was null.