Korean J Asthma Allergy Clin Immunol.  2008 Jun;28(2):113-120.

Development and Validation of a Korean Allergic Rhinitis-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire (KARQLQ)

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Quantitative measurement of allergic rhinitis (AR)-specific quality of life (QOL) impairment is important for the evaluation of its burden and efficacy of treatment. However, the QOL questionnaire for Korean AR has not yet been developed.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to develop and validate the QOL questionnaire for Korean AR patients. METHOD: We surveyed 22 AR-related items in 284 persistent AR patients and, based on the survey, developed an AR-specific Korean QOL questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 15 items and adapted 5-point scale for each item. We validated the questionnaire by comparing the QOL scores from 95 patients before and after the treatments with mometasone or levocetrizine. RESULT: The mean QOL score was lowered by 0.73 (0.33, 1.80) (P<0.001) in 30 patients with a definite improvement and by 0.63 (-0.33, 1.73) (P<0.001) in 29 patients with a slight improvement. However, the score was not significantly lowered in 17 patients without improvement [0.20 (0.00, 0.33), P=0.24]. The questionnaire was also highly reproducible with the value of intraclass correlation coefficient and interclass standard deviation as 0.996 (P<0.001) and 0.736, respectively.
CONCLUSION
We developed and validated a Korean allergic rhinitis QOL questionnaire, and this can be used for evaluating the efficacy of treatment modalities for AR.

MeSH Terms

Humans
Pregnadienediols
Quality of Life
Rhinitis
Rhinitis, Allergic, Perennial
Mometasone Furoate
Surveys and Questionnaires
Pregnadienediols