Quality of life measurement in the postoperative period in general and gastrointestinal surgery

Introduction Health related quality of life measurement (HRQL) is widely accepted as an appropriate outcome of surgical care for assessing effectiveness and for risk adjusted outcomes Nevertheless its use in the immediate postoperative period has show limitations The aim of this study is to prove that is possible, with a specific new tool, to assess the HRQL during this period Patients and Methods The study is designed to create a specific close questionnaire related to the patient's condition after surgery, structured in domains, with the subsequent use of literature searches, patient interviews (n=30), and a Delphi survey with health care providers Finally the tool was validated using a pre-test (n=36) and a prospective observational cohort trial (n=250), to assess the discriminant validity for different cohorts of patients, reliability, responsiveness, and convergent validity, and to compare with the widely used generic tool, Short Form 36 (SF-36) Results The questionnaire was shown to have good sensitivity to change (single index and domains score), as well as good sensitivity to distinguish cohorts of patients, a high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0 88), absence of redundancy between domains (Spearman's rho range, 0 29-0 84), and good convergent validity with patient opinion The SF-36 questionnaire showed poor discriminant validity, and lack of convergent validity with patient opinion Conclusions These results support that the created questionnaire is appropriate to assess HRQL in the immediate postoperative period, and was more specific than SF-36 (C) 2010 AEC Published by Elsevier Espana, S L All rights reserved