Health-Related Quality of Life Metrics in Patients With Retrograde Cricopharyngeus Dysfunction

We sought to objectively characterize functional quality of life and social anxiety metrics in patients with retrograde - cricopharyngeus dysfunction (R-CPD) using validated questionnaires.

A survey was posted to a private R-CPD Facebook group and a public R-CPD Reddit group. The survey contained demographic and clinical questions, as well as the PROMIS-29 questionnaire and the Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ). The PROMIS-29 questionnaire contains 7 subdomains of quality of life functioning and is scored against a national average. The SAQ is a 30-item questionnaire with 5 subdomains of social anxiety. Comparisons of means were performed using t-tests and logistic regressions.

Survey results from 239 respondents were included. The majority of respondents were young (<30 years, 51.1%) and female (73.6%). Two hundred twenty (92.1%) reported all 3 cardinal R-CPD symptoms and were included in the analysis of PROMIS-29 and SAQ results. On the PROMIS-29 questionnaire, respondents reported high levels of anxiety (71.0%), depression (55.1%), fatigue (66.8%), sleep impairment (43.0%), social avoidance (54.3%), and pain impairment (58.8%). The mean SAQ score was 96.4, with 52.0% of respondents scoring above the cutoff for social anxiety. Reported anxiety was highest in interactions with strangers (71.1%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 64.3%-77.9%) and lowest in interactions with the sex 1 is attracted to (44.5%, 95% CI: 37.0%-52.0%).

Patients with R-CPD have high levels of anxiety and other impairment. Results may help clinicians understand and treat patients with R-CPD, and provide benchmarks by which clinicians may better monitor response to therapy, and provide benchmarks for clinicians to better monitor therapy response.