Validation of the inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire IBDQ-D, German version, for patients with ileal pouch anal anastomosis for ulcerative colitis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire (IBDQ) is the standard instrument for assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. It has not been validated for patients with ileal pouch anal anastomosis (IPAA) and ulcerative colitis (UC).

METHODS: To determine acceptance (percentage of completed items), reliability (Cronbach's alpha of the IBDQ-D subscales) and convergent validity (correlations of the IBDQ subscales with the questionnaires used for validation) 61 patients with UC (age 52.7 +/- 13.9 years; 47 % female, 53 % male) and IPAA completed the German (Competence Network IBD) version of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ-D), the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale German Version (HADS-D) and the Giessener Symptom List (GBB 24). Face validity was assessed by a physicians' and patients' panel. All 37 patients underwent endoscopy making it possible to differentiate between patients with and without pouchitis (discriminant validity).

RESULTS: With 97.7 % completed items the acceptance was high. Cronbach's alpha value for the subscales ranged from 0.71 to 0.93. Missing items covering extraintestinal manifestations of IBD were criticized by patients. The correlation coefficients with comparable subscales of other instruments ranged between 0.41 and 0.76. Patients with clinical pouchitis scored significantly lower in all subscales than patients without pouchitis (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: The IBDQ-D has good acceptance, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, but limited face and construct validity in patients with IPAA and UC.