Dyspnea evaluation instrument for patients with cancer: translation and cross-cultural adaptation of cancer dyspnea scale for Brazilian Portuguese.

PURPOSE: To cross-culturally adapt the Cancer Dyspnea Scale for individuals with cancer diagnosis to Brazilian Portuguese.

METHODS

This methodological study followed the COSMIN and Beaton et al. recommendations. The expert committee evaluation was performed by six individuals with different expertise. The pretest included 30 subjects with cancer diagnosis of both sexes, aged ≥18 years with or without a history of dyspnea. Those with hearing or cognitive impairments or difficulty understanding and responding to questionnaires were excluded. Content validity was assessed using the content validity index (CVI).

RESULTS

The expert committee included four healthcare professionals, one expert in linguistics and one expert in methodological studies. During the expert committee evaluation, the understanding and clarity of the instrument reached a CVI > 0.80 after four rounds. Pretest mean age was 53.86 ± 14.31 and 66.6% (n = 20) were females. The mean time of cancer diagnosis was 17.50 months (7.5 to 60.0 months) and 34.88% (n = 13) presented breast cancer diagnosis. In the pretest, a CVI ≥ 0.90 was reached in the first round.

CONCLUSION

The Cancer Dyspnea Scale was satisfactorily adapted for Brazilian Portuguese. Further studies are needed to assess the psychometric properties of the adapted scale.