Nepean Dyspepsia Index applies to functional dyspepsia in China

FD, a common non-organic disease in the world, greatly affects the patient's quality of life. However, treatment of FD is still controversial and no single therapy is uniformly effective, due, in part, to absence of a reliable evaluation instrument. The Nepean Dyspepsia Index (NDI), measuring both symptom scores and impairment of the dyspepsia-specific health-related quality of life in FD patients, has been designed to diagnose FD and translated into several languages. Moreover, its utility has been proved to be validated by researches in western countries. However, DI has not been translated and validated in China./p> A research article to be published on July 7, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team led by Professor Liang from Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine translated NDI and assessed the reliability and validity of this translated version in Chinese patients. /p>

According to the WHO-QOL methodology of cross-culture adaptation for quality of life, the NDI was formally translated from the original version into Chinese, including forward translation, back translation, a pretest and cross-cultural adaptation. In additional, internal consistency analysis with Cronbath's alpha was performed to its reliability. Pearson Item-Dimension Correlation coefficient was employed to evaluate content validity. Factor analysis and structural equation models were used to assess construct validity./p>

The study indicated that the Chinese version of the NDI is a reliable and valid scale for measuring health-related quality of life (H-QOL) and disease severity in Chinese patients with functional dyspepsia. It is recommended to be used in FD-related clinical researches in China in the future.

Source: World Journal of Gastroenterology