Quality of life in multiple sclerosis patients with urinary disorders: discriminative validation of the English version of Qualiveen.

UNLABELLED: The Qualiveen questionnaire is a urinary disorder (UD)-specific health related quality of life (HRQL) instrument. Recent data suggests Qualiveen has excellent validity in French-speaking multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

AIM: To assess discriminative measurement properties of the English version of Qualiveen.

METHODS

Fifty-five Canadian MS out-patients completed a set of questionnaires, including Qualiveen, MSQOL-54, a MS-specific HRQL questionnaire, urinary function assessments and the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) twice at an interval of two to four weeks.

RESULTS

Qualiveen proved internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha coefficients 0.73 to 0.90 for the four Qualiveen domains) and test-retest reliable (intraclass correlation coefficients 0.88 to 0.94). Consistent with a priori predictions, we found a strong association between overall Qualiveen score and the degree of incontinence (0.63), a moderate correlation with the type of urinary symptoms (0.49), a weak association with manner of voiding (0.28) and weak or absent correlations with MSQOL-54 domains, EDSS bladder/bowel and global EDSS. Predictions proved generally accurate (weighted kappa = 0.65).

CONCLUSION

The internal consistency, test-retest reliability and cross-sectional construct validity of the English version of Qualiveen are excellent, and similar to the original French version. Further studies should explore Qualiveen's longitudinal validity and responsiveness.