Concepedia

Abstract

The health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with pulmonary non-tuberculous mycobacteria (pNTM) infection has not yet been quantified.To evaluate the reliability and validity of the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) in quantifying the HRQoL of patients with pNTM.We performed a cross-sectional study of 52 patients with pNTM. All the subjects completed the CAT, SGRQ and Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36) questionnaires and underwent pulmonary function testing (PFT). A test-retest was performed and Cronbach α was calculated to assess reliability. Correlations of the CAT and SGRQ with SF-36 and PFT were performed to assess validity.The mean age of the patients was 67 years; 96% (50/52) were female. Both individual and total CAT and SGRQ scores showed good correlation between the test on Day 1 and the repeat test on Day 5. Cronbach's α (0.77-0.92) indicated satisfactory internal consistency. All scores were moderately or strongly correlated with the SF-36 Physical Component Summary score.The SGRQ and CAT questionnaires showed statistically significant validity in assessing HRQoL in patients with pNTM.