| Popis: |
Background: The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines require a scale measuring quality of life (QOL) to comprise QOL items but not symptoms items. The mini-Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (miniAQLQ) was developed before those guidelines were published and the authors identified 5/15 items as symptom items (items 1, 4, 6, 8, 10), items similar to those of a commonly used measure of asthma symptoms, the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ). The aim was to examine the correlations between the ACQ, the miniAQLQ, the five miniAQLQ symptoms, the remaining 10 QOL items of the miniAQLQ and the Severe Asthma Questionnaire (SAQ), a QOL scale consistent with the FDA guidelines. Methods: In a cross-sectional survey, 395 patients with severe asthma from 6 UK specialist asthma centres completed the SAQ, ACQ and the miniAQLQ. Results: The miniAQLQ symptom and miniAQLQ QOL item correlations with the ACQ are significantly different, p Conclusion: Correlations and sample sizes are shown in Table 1. The symptom items of the miniAQLQ are highly correlated with the ACQ because the symptom items of the miniAQLQ are very similar with items in the ACQ. The use of ACQ and miniAQLQ together is likely to be of limited value. Symptoms contribute to QOL but are separate from it both statistically and conceptually. |
