Measurement of functional inability and quality of life in cardiac failure. Transcultural adaptation and validation of the Goldman, Minnesota and Duke questionnaires

Cardiac failure has a big impact on the daily life of patients and this can be evaluated using quality of life questionnaires. The aim of this study was to translate and adapt for the French population and test the validity of two quality of life self-administered-questionnaires: the Duke health Profile, the Minnesota Quality of Life Questionnaire in Cardiac Failure and one function capacity questionnaire, the Goldman Specific Activity Scale. The questionnaires were translated and retranslated then submitted to a committee of experts: the final version was presented to 30 patients. The study of the quantitative properties of the three instruments was performed on a sample of 74 patients with cardiac failure to assess their validity and 26 stable patients after cardiac transplantation to test reproducibility. The results of this study show that these three instruments are valid and reproducible and are comparable to the original documents: Cronbach's Alpha ranging from 0.54 to 0.78 for the Duke, except for the social dimension, and from 0.73 to 0.93 for the Minnesota, except for its incapacity dimension, intraclass correlation coefficient > 0.6 in all dimensions. The validity of convergence with LVEF and the NYHA measured during hospitalisation for decompensation was poor, except for the Goldman. The three instruments provided coherent information. The authors conclude that a structured method allows transcultural adaptation of instruments of evaluation of quality of life, the French version having comparable properties to the original documents: they may be used for clinical research.