IADR Abstract Archives
Quality of Life Questionnaire for Thai Oral Cancer Patients
Objectives: The objective of this study was to implement a quality of life questionnaire that can be used in Thai oral cancer patients.
Methods: University of Washington quality of life scale was translated into Thai language. There were four components in the questionnaire; disease-specific items, importance-rating scale, general quality of life questions and opened-end questions. Content of the questionnaire was validated by 4 oral cancer specialists, one cancer patient and one dental patient and then tested the internal validity in 30 oral cancer patients. Test-retest reliability was also performed using Spearman’s rank correlation. Significance level was set at 0.05.
Results: Of all the oral cancer patients, 26 were male. The age range was 34-80. The internal validity test showed that the questionnaire obtained a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.77. The test-retest correlations ranked from 0.5 to 1 (all P<0.05). Oral cancer patients presented significantly poorer indications of pain (mean score = 61.5), chewing (60.9) and swallowing (71.4) than shoulder dysfunction (92.4), volume of saliva (95.6) and taste (97.1). In addition, pain had the highest percentage (54%) in the important rating scale.
Conclusions: The Thai version of University of Washington Quality of Life Scale was valid and reliable. Oral cancer patients had fair quality of life with pain and problems in chewing and swallowing.
Methods: University of Washington quality of life scale was translated into Thai language. There were four components in the questionnaire; disease-specific items, importance-rating scale, general quality of life questions and opened-end questions. Content of the questionnaire was validated by 4 oral cancer specialists, one cancer patient and one dental patient and then tested the internal validity in 30 oral cancer patients. Test-retest reliability was also performed using Spearman’s rank correlation. Significance level was set at 0.05.
Results: Of all the oral cancer patients, 26 were male. The age range was 34-80. The internal validity test showed that the questionnaire obtained a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.77. The test-retest correlations ranked from 0.5 to 1 (all P<0.05). Oral cancer patients presented significantly poorer indications of pain (mean score = 61.5), chewing (60.9) and swallowing (71.4) than shoulder dysfunction (92.4), volume of saliva (95.6) and taste (97.1). In addition, pain had the highest percentage (54%) in the important rating scale.
Conclusions: The Thai version of University of Washington Quality of Life Scale was valid and reliable. Oral cancer patients had fair quality of life with pain and problems in chewing and swallowing.