Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2017; 23(19): 3530-3537
Published online May 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i19.3530
Short health scale: A valid measure of health-related quality of life in Korean-speaking patients with inflammatory bowel disease
Soo-Kyung Park, Bong Min Ko, Hyeon Jeong Goong, Jeong Yeon Seo, Sang Hyuk Lee, Hae Lim Baek, Moon Sung Lee, Dong Il Park
Soo-Kyung Park, Jeong Yeon Seo, Sang Hyuk Lee, Hae Lim Baek, Dong Il Park, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul 03181, South Korea
Bong Min Ko, Hyeon Jeong Goong, Moon Sung Lee, Digestive Disease Center and Research Institute, Department of Internal Medicine, Soonchunhyang University School of Medicine, Bucheon 13557, South Korea
Author contributions: Park SK designed the research; Park SK, Ko BM and Park DI performed the research; Park SK analyzed the data; Park SK wrote the paper; Goong HJ, Seo JY, Lee SH, Baek HL and Lee MS gave critical revision of the article for important intellectual content; Park DI final approval of the article.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Korea.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors disclosed no financial relationships relevant to this study.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dong Il Park, MD, PhD, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 29 Saemunan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03181, South Korea. diksmc.park@samsung.com
Telephone: +82-2-20012059 Fax: +82-2-20012049
Received: December 27, 2017
Peer-review started: December 29, 2017
First decision: March 3, 2017
Revised: March 14, 2017
Accepted: May 4, 2017
Article in press: May 4, 2017
Published online: May 21, 2017
Processing time: 142 Days and 23.2 Hours
Abstract
AIM

To evaluate the short health scale (SHS), a new, simple, four-part visual analogue scale questionnaire that is designed to assess the impact of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) on health-related quality of life (HRQOL), in Korean-speaking patients with IBD.

METHODS

The SHS was completed by 256 patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Individual SHS items were correlated with inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire (IBDQ) dimensions and with disease activity to assess validity. Test-retest reliability, responsiveness and patient or disease characteristics with probable association with high SHS scores were analyzed.

RESULTS

Of 256 patients with IBD, 139 (54.3%) had UC and 117 (45.7%) had CD. The correlation coefficients between SHS questions about “symptom burden”, “activities of daily living”, and “disease-related worry” and their corresponding dimensions in the IBDQ ranged from 0.62 to 0.71, compared with correlation coefficients ranging from -0.45 to -0.61 for their non-corresponding dimensions. There was a stepwise increase in SHS scores, with increasing disease activity in both CD and UC (all P values < 0.001). Reliability was confirmed with test-retest correlations ranging from 0.68 to 0.90 (all P values < 0.001). Responsiveness was confirmed with the patients who remained in remission. Their SHS scores remained unchanged, except for the SHS dimension “disease-related worry”. In the multivariate analysis, female sex was associated with worse “general well-being” (OR = 2.28, 95%CI: 1.02-5.08) along with worse disease activity.

CONCLUSION

The SHS is a valid and reliable measure of HRQOL in Korean-speaking patients with IBD.

Keywords: Quality of life; Inflammatory bowel disease; Ulcerative colitis; Crohn’s disease; Disease activity

Core tip: The short health scale (SHS) is a new, simple, four-part visual analog scale questionnaire that is designed to assess the impact of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) on health-related quality of life (HRQOL). In Korean-speaking IBD patients, total SHS scores correlated with total IBDQ scores in both Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). There was a stepwise increase in SHS scores with increasing disease activity in both CD and UC. Reliability was confirmed with test-retest correlations. Thus, SHS is a valid and reliable measure of HRQOL in Korean-speaking patients with IBD.