Health-Related Quality of Life in Intermittent Claudication. Executive Summaryand Final Reports

摘要

The pilot study developed a self-administered instrument aimed at assessing thefunctional health of intermittent claudicants, and tested its acceptability, reliability, and validity in group of 76 New England veterans. The instrument, which used scales from the Functional Status Questionnaire as its generic measures of functional health was highly devised to quantitate pain, sexual potency, general health, and enjoyment of life had acceptable reliability and validity; however, single-item questions assessing the degree to which patients are bothered by their symptoms will require further development. General enjoyment of life was not closely corrolated with any aspect of functional health except pain. Patients' reports of pain-free walking distance correlated more closely with physical function than any of the objective measures of disease used; further, results of objective tests correlated poorly with each other. The authors conclude that a self-administered instrument would be appropriate for longitudinal tracking of functional health in patients with peripheral arterial occlusive disease that many of the scales or items developed in the study should be incorporated into such an instrument; and that objective tests commonly used to quantitate the severity of peripheral arterial occlusive disease may be poor indicators of the burden of disease as experienced by patients.