Development and validation of the Mayo Clinic Bowel Prep Tolerability Questionnaire.

BACKGROUND

Bowel cleansing is paramount for colonoscopy quality. Unfortunately, an adequate bowel preparation is often limited by side effects and/or patient's intolerance to bowel preparation solutions. Comparisons among different preparations are limited by the lack of validated instruments designed to assess patient's tolerability.

AIM

To develop and validate a simple, comprehensive instrument to assess bowel preparation tolerability in patients undergoing colonoscopy.

METHODS

Development and validation by phases: Phase I (bibliographic search and questionnaire design); Phase II (assessment of content validity and modification of the questionnaire); Phase III (assessment of reproducibility, final validation, and definitive version of the questionnaire).

RESULTS

The initial draft of the questionnaire was generated based on a systematic literature review and feedback from a panel of consultants. Content validity was tested in a focus group of 25 patients undergoing colonoscopy. Patients' suggestions were reviewed by the research team and a second draft of the questionnaire was generated. Final validation and reproducibility were successfully tested (agreement: 86-100%, kappa: 0.77-1.00) in a convenience sample of 100 patients undergoing bowel preparation with different cleansing solutions.

CONCLUSION

The Mayo Clinic Bowel Prep Tolerability Questionnaire is a simple, comprehensive instrument suitable to evaluate the tolerability of various types of bowel preparations.