Screening for suspected chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with an eleven-item pre-interview questionnaire (11-Q)

Early diagnosis is central to the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In time-constrained clinical situations, a pre-interview questionnaire can be a useful method for alerting both clinicians and patients with COPD, particularly for elderly patients. To screen subjects who might have COPD, we have developed an efficient pre-interview questionnaire.

In study I, we developed an 11-item questionnaire (11-Q) to alert primary care providers to the possibility of COPD, and the validity of this questionnaire was investigated. In study II, a randomized and prospective cross-sectional study was performed on a total of 245 subjects with or without respiratory symptoms.

Good test-retest reliability and validity were shown in study I; the internal consistency of 11-Q was highly preserved (Cronbach alpha value of 0.867), with a high reproducibility of responses by inter- and intra examinees. Study II showed that the 11-Q in COPD patients with more than moderate severity was significantly higher than that in bronchial asthma or non-cardiopulmonary subjects (both, p<0.0001). Among the COPD patients, the total score significantly distinguished the severity of COPD as mild or more than moderate.

The pre-interview questionnaire, 11-Q, was found to be a useful tool to alert primary care providers to subjects with COPD and could also be used to distinguish COPD with a more than moderate severity from bronchial asthma. The 11-Q can be used as a simple and inexpensive method of predicting COPD, thus being a useful tool to alert primary care providers to patients with suspected COPD, particularly among the elderly.