Validation of the St George’s respiratory questionnaire Vietnamese Version in new pulmonary tuberculosis patients
Abstract Background: According to the Global Tuberculosis Report 2019, Vietnam is one of the 20 countries with the highest TB prevalence in the world. Pulmonary tuberculosis has a significant effect on lung functions, causing many obstacles in daily activities and affects the quality of patient’s lives.Methods: The case-series study conducted on 43 newly-diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis patients at the Department of Tuberculosis - Military Hospital 103 within 4 months. The aims of the current study were to evaluate the validity of the Vietnamese version of the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire and to investigate the relationship between SGRQ scores and the clinical and subclinical symptoms in new pulmonary tuberculosis patients.Results: The results indicate that Vietnamese version of the SGRQ has high reliability with Cronbach's alpha of Total score was 0.9451, Cronbach's alpha of all domains was above 0.6, of which the Symptom domain was 0.6635, the Impact domain was 0.9069, the Activity domain was 0.9121. The study also showed that SGRQ score was proportional to the aggregate size of all cavities on chest X-ray (r = 0.3772) and inversely proportional to BMI (r = -0.2843), MGIT days to positivity (r = -0.1635).Conclusions: The Vietnamese version of the SGRQ is a highly reliable and valuable questionnaire in assessing symptoms and life effects in new PTB patients. We recommend it as symptom measurement and quality of life evaluation in patients with new PTB in future studies.Trial registration: The study protocol was approved by the Ethical Review Board Committee of Vietnam Military Medical University (IRB No. 250/2020/QĐ-HVQY) and by the local ethics committee of Military hospital 103. All participants had provided written informed consents for this study.