• Károly R Kulich, Ahmed Madisch, Franco Pacini, Jose M Piqué, Jaroslaw Regula, Christo J Van Rensburg, László Ujszászy, Jonas Carlsson, Katarina Halling, and Ingela K Wiklund.
• AstraZeneca R&D, Medical Science, Mölndal, S-431 86, Sweden. Karoly.Kulich@astrazeneca.com.
• Health Qual Life Out. 2008 Jan 31; 6: 12.

BackgroundSymptoms of dyspepsia significantly disrupt patients' lives and reliable methods of assessing symptom status are important for patient management. The aim of the current study was to document the psychometric characteristics of the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) and the Quality of Life in Reflux and Dyspepsia questionnaire (QOLRAD) in Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Spanish patients with dyspepsia.Methods853 patients with symptoms of dyspepsia completed the GSRS, the QOLRAD, the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale.ResultsThe internal consistency reliability of the GSRS was 0.43-0.87 and of the QOLRAD 0.79-0.95. Test-retest reliability of the GSRS was 0.36-0.75 and of the QOLRAD 0.41-0.82. GSRS Abdominal pain domain correlated significantly with all QOLRAD domains in most language versions, and with SF-36 Bodily pain in all versions. QOLRAD domains correlated significantly with the majority of SF-36 domains in most versions. Both questionnaires were able to differentiate between patients whose health status differed according to symptom frequency and severity.ConclusionThe psychometric characteristics of the different language versions of the GSRS and QOLRAD were found to be good, with acceptable reliability and validity. The GSRS and QOLRAD were found to be useful for evaluating dyspeptic symptoms and their impact on patients' daily lives in multinational clinical trials.

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