Validation of the Italian HeartQoL: a short health-related quality of life questionnaire for patients with ischemic heart disease

Abstract

The psychometric properties of the core disease-specific 14-item Italian HeartQoL health-related quality of life questionnaire have been evaluated in this study. The Italian version of the HeartQoL, the MacNew questionnaire, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale were completed by 472 patients (angina, N = 183; myocardial infarction, N = 167; or ischemic heart failure, N = 122) who were recruited in five Italian centers (Florence, Veruno, Turin, Udine, and Naples) between 2015 and 2017. Patients with myocardial infarction reported significantly higher HeartQoL scores than patients with angina or ischemic heart failure. Floor and ceiling effects were always minor on the HeartQoL global scale and physical subscale with moderate ceiling effects on the emotional subscale in the total group and in patients with myocardial infarction. The bifactorial structure of the original HeartQoL questionnaire was confirmed with strong physical, emotional, and global scale H coefficients (> 0.50). The HeartQoL scales demonstrated optimal internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.84). Convergent and divergent validity were confirmed. Discriminative validity was not confirmed for age, largely confirmed for sex, and fully confirmed for anxiety, depression, and distress. The Italian HeartQoL questionnaire demonstrated adequate key psychometric attributes of internal consistency reliability and validity in Italian-speaking patients with ischemic heart disease.

Translation and evaluation of the HeartQoL in patients with coronary heart disease in Iceland

“…It should be noted that the ordinal alpha was higher than Cronbach’s alpha illustrating the importance of taking the ordinal nature of the data into account [ 35 ]. The internal consistency measured by Cronbach’s alpha was consistent with levels that have been reported in a study of 22 European languages [ 14 ], in English [ 10 ], German [ 33 ] and Italian [ 34 ]. Despite satisfactory high alpha values on the raw scores, these reliability coefficients should be interpreted with caution in models with a bad fit [ 25 ].…”

“…The problem with correlated errors between items 3 and 4 may be because both items measure physical efforts but at different levels. The hypothesized dimensionality of the HeartQoL has been evaluated using Mokken scale analysis in patients with CHD; for example, the original HeartQoL validation study [ 9 ] and the evaluations of both the German [ 33 ] and Italian [ 34 ] version of the HeartQoL concluded that the global scale and the two subscales are unidimensional based solely on the Loevinger H coefficient. Thus, the assumptions of unidimensionality need to be further explored in future evaluation studies of the HeartQoL.…”

“…The HeartQoL questionnaire is a heart disease-specific HRQoL instrument for patients with CHD and has been validated internationally in 30 languages in 11 peer-reviewed publications [ 10 , 12 – 14 , 33 , 34 ].…”

Exercise Training: The Holistic Approach in Cardiovascular Prevention

“…However, to further reduce risk of new CV events, it is important to act not only on optimization of therapy and its adherence, but also on other risk factors such as OB and lifestyle [91][92][93]. Among cardiac rehabilitation elements, exercise training showed to play a key role in improving quality of life and reducing morbidity in patients with CV diseases [94][95][96][97].…”

Adaptação transcultural e análise das propriedades psicométricas do Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire - HeartQoL com indivíduos brasileiros submetidos à correção cirúrgica de valvopatias

“…Sobre a caracterização sociodemográfica dos participantes da presente pesquisa, as amostras nas distintas etapas do estudo foram consideradas semelhantes entre si, haja vista que a maioria era, predominantemente, do sexo feminino, diferentemente de estudos anteriores que apresentaram amostras majoritariamente masculinas (OLDRIDGE et al, 2014a;LEE et al, 2015;DE SMEDT et al, 2016;OLDRIDGE et al, 2018;ZANGGER et al, 2018;GRONSET et al, 2019;RANJANDISH;MAHMOOD;SHAGHAGH, 2019;HUBER et al, 2020;SABA et al, 2020;FATTIROLLI et al, 2021;LUAN et al, 2022).…”