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An assessment of a short composite questionnaire designed for use in an interventional spine pain management setting
Robert Burnham1, Gordon Stanford, Lori Gray
1Central Alberta Pain & Rehabilitation Institute, Lacombe, Alberta, Canada. rburnham@telusplanet.net
Objective:
To evaluate the reliability, validity, responsiveness, and practicality of a short composite questionnaire designed for use in an interventional spine pain management setting.
Setting:
A rural interventional spine pain management practice.
Patients:
Sixty subjects undergoing spinal intervention procedures (injection or neurotomy).
Methods:
The Pain Disability Quality of Life Questionnaire-Spine (PDQQ-S) assesses spine pain quality, related disability, and life satisfaction/quality with the use of 2 questions for each domain. To assess the PDQQ-S, patients completed 4 questionnaires (McGill Pain Questionnaire [MPQ], Oswestry Disability Questionnaire [ODQ], Assessment of Quality of Life [AQoL], and PDQQ-S). Patients completed the questionnaires twice before their procedure and once after their procedure.
Main Outcome Measures:
Test-retest reliability was assessed by calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient for the 2 preprocedure questionnaire completions. Validity was assessed by calculating the Pearson correlation of the pain quality, disability, and life quality/satisfaction question scores of the PDQQ-S with the MPQ, ODQ, and AQoL, respectively. Questionnaire responsiveness was explored by calculating responsiveness ratio scores. Practicality was assessed by recording the time required to complete each questionnaire and the ease with which it was completed.
Results:
Test-retest reliability correlation scores were as follows: PDQQ-S = 0.73; MPQ = 0.88; ODQ = 0.89; and AQoL = 0.83. Acceptable correlations existed between the pain, disability, and life quality/satisfaction domains of the PDQQ-S and the MPQ (.50), ODQ (.71), and AQoL (-.43), respectively. Responsiveness ratio scores for the PDQQ-S, MPQ, ODQ, and AQoL were 4.4, 1.9, 2.3, and 0.7, respectively. Compared with the other questionnaires, the PDQQ-S required approximately one fifth the time to complete and was significantly easier to understand.
Conclusions:
The PDQQ-S demonstrates adequate reliability and validity and superior responsiveness and practicality in persons with low back pain undergoing interventional spine pain management procedures.
