Validation of the Minnesota living with heart failure questionnaire in primary care

To evaluate the applicability, internal consistency and validity of the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) when used in primary care, compared with the Short Form-36 (SF-36) health survey.

The two questionnaires were administered to 589 patients with chronic heart failure who were registered with 97 primary care physicians. The applicability, internal consistency and validity of the MLHFQ were evaluated and comparisons were made with the SF-36.

More than 90% of patients completed the questionnaires. The percentage of uncompleted items was low. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.79 to 0.94 for the various MLHFQ dimensions. Exploratory factorial analysis identified two factors that explained 65.8% of the variance. Moderate to good correlations were observed between similar dimensions of the MLHFQ and SF-36 (correlation coefficient -0.43 to -0.73). There were significant associations between scores on the MLHFQ and clinical measures of disease severity.

When used in primary care, the MLHFQ had a high level of acceptability and good psychometric properties compared with the SF-36. Consequently, it would be useful for assessing health-related quality of life in patients with chronic heart failure.