Persian Adaptation of Actionable Bladder Symptom Screening Tool Among Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most neurologic disease among individuals of 20-45 years. About 75% of MS patients report bladder problems that have a moderate-high impact on their life. The present study aimed to translate and determine the validity and reliability of the Persian version of ABSST questionnaire.

The standard validation process for preparing the Persian version of ABSST was performed by means of an expert committee. After a pilot study and confirming the harmonized translated form, we tested the final version of questionnaire on 40 patients with a definite diagnosis of MS symptoms, once at the baseline and another after two weeks in order to prevent recall-induced agreement. Test-retest reliability was calculated as Spearman's correlation coefficient. Also, content validity indices (CVIs), as well as internal consistency were analyzed in STATA.

Forty participants with a mean age of 38.8 years were included in this study. Only 20% of them were male. The Persian version achieved a good internal consistency with a Cronbach-α value of 0.91, relatively similar to the original version. The coefficients for measuring the correlation between each item score with the total score of our questionnaire were between 0.58-0.89. This value confirmed an appropriate validity for the Persian version of ABSST. Regarding test-retest reliability assessment, total Spearman`s coefficient was 0.85; with 0.84 for the severity of symptoms and 0.87 for the impact of urologic disorders on patients` social life.

The current findings proved that this accurate questionnaire could be used to investigate urinary symptoms among Persian-speaking MS patients.