Inflammatory bowel disease: developing a short disease specific scale to measure health related quality of life.

AIM: To report on the preliminary development of a short scale, the Edinburgh inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire (EIBDQ) to measure disease specific aspects of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in terms of both physical impact and health related quality of life (HRQoL) consequences.

METHODS

A survey of individuals with Crohn's disease (n=50), ulcerative colitis (n=50) and psoriatic arthritis (n=28) was carried out using the EIBDQ. The data were subject to factor analysis in order to investigate underlying dimension of the EIBDQ which were then analysed for internal consistency. Data for disease specific aspects of the EIBDQ were compared between IBD patients and psoriatic arthritis patients using contingency tables and the underlying dimension of the EIBDQ were correlated with measures of quality of life and psychological morbidity and a disease specific measure.

RESULTS

There are three underlying dimensions to the EIBDQ: a disease specific factor, a bowel specific factor and an information factor. The disease specific factor and the bowel specific factor are internally consistent and correlate with other measures of disease activity, quality of life and psychological morbidity. The EIBDQ is able to discriminate between IBD and another inflammatory disease: psoriatic arthritis.

CONCLUSION

The EIBDQ is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring disease specific aspects of IBD but further development is required.