The fatigue impact scale for daily use in patients with hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus chronic infections.

INTRODUCTION

Fatigue is an important clinical finding in the hepatitis virus chronic infection. However, the absence of scales to measure fatigue, translated and validated for Brazilian Portuguese, prevents access to information essential in clarifying specific clinical conditions in this population.

AIM

The aim of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the fatigue impact scale for daily use (D-FIS), in Brazilian Portuguese, for patients with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) chronic infection.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

In this cross-sectional study, the authors evaluated the D-FIS in 101 outpatients, followed at the reference hospital. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview Brazilian (MINI PLUS) was used to identify psychiatric disorders, and the Short Form Health Survey 36-item (SF-36) to evaluate the self-reported quality of life. We also examined the impact of fatigue on the quality of life of this group of patients.

RESULTS

Relevant psychometric D-FIS results were: floor effect proved to be 1%; skewness was 0.46; item homogeneity was 0.59 and SEM (SD = 8.51) was 2.4. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.920 and item total correlation yielded coefficients ranging from 0.65 (item 1) to 0.85 (item 3). In a linear regression model, fatigue and depression influenced the self-reported quality of life.

CONCLUSION

This study presents that the fatigue scale for daily use in Brazilian Portuguese can be considered a useful tool to verify the presence of fatigue in patients with the hepatitis viruses B and C.