Institute for Health Services Research in Dermatology and Nursing (IVDP), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany.
Hospital Universitario Infanta Leonor, Madrid, Spain.
Br J Dermatol. 2018 Dec;179(6):1329-1333. doi: 10.1111/bjd.16902. Epub 2018 Oct 5.
Chronic lymphoedema (CLE) is a burdensome disease of multiple causes leading to significant reductions in health-related quality of life (HRQoL). A specific method to assess HRQoL is the Freiburg Life Quality Assessment for lymphoedema (FLQA-L), which consists of 92 items.
To develop and validate a short form of the FLQA-L with improved psychometric properties and feasibility.
The FLQA-L validation data were reanalysed by patients and experts. The application of factor analysis enabled the exclusion of lower-load items. An optimized short version of the questionnaire (FLQA-LS) with 33 items was generated and tested in a validation study on patients with different forms of CLE.
In total, 348 patients with CLE of the upper or lower extremities were included (mean age 57.3 years, range 24-89; 90.8% female), and data from 301 patients could be analysed. Overall, 42.8% of the patients had secondary lymphoedema, 23.6% had primary lymphoedema, 9.5% had lipoedema and 24.1% had lipolymphoedema. The lower extremities were mostly affected (64.4% of the patients presented with leg involvement and 17.5% with both arm and leg impairment). The FLQA-LS showed good internal consistency, with high Cronbach's alpha in the subscales and in the global scale ranging between 0.79 and 0.94. Regarding convergent validity, a good correlation was found with the general HRQoL questionnaire EQ-5D (r = 0.72, P < 0.001).
FLQA-LS is an improved version of the FLQA-L questionnaire for chronic lymphoedema. It demonstrated validity and feasibility and can be easily used in clinical practice and research studies.
慢性淋巴水肿（CLE）是一种由多种原因引起的疾病，会导致健康相关生活质量（HRQoL）显著下降。评估 HRQoL 的一种特定方法是弗莱堡淋巴水肿生活质量评估（FLQA-L），它由 92 个项目组成。
开发和验证 FLQA-L 的简短形式，以提高心理测量学特性和可行性。
通过患者和专家重新分析 FLQA-L 的验证数据。应用因子分析排除了低负荷项目。生成并测试了一种优化的短问卷（FLQA-LS），包含 33 个项目，适用于不同类型 CLE 的患者验证研究。
共纳入 348 例上肢或下肢 CLE 患者（平均年龄 57.3 岁，范围 24-89；90.8%为女性），其中 301 例患者的数据可进行分析。总体而言，42.8%的患者为继发性淋巴水肿，23.6%为原发性淋巴水肿，9.5%为脂肪水肿，24.1%为脂肪淋巴水肿。下肢最常受累（64.4%的患者有腿部受累，17.5%的患者有手臂和腿部受损）。FLQA-LS 显示出良好的内部一致性，子量表和总体量表的 Cronbach's alpha 值均较高，范围在 0.79 到 0.94 之间。关于收敛有效性，与一般 HRQoL 问卷 EQ-5D 之间存在良好的相关性（r = 0.72，P < 0.001）。
FLQA-LS 是 FLQA-L 问卷的改进版本，用于慢性淋巴水肿。它具有有效性和可行性，可以在临床实践和研究中轻松使用。
