Validation of the Penn Acoustic Neuroma Quality of Life (PANQOL) Scale for Hindi-Speaking Patients Recently Diagnosed with Vestibular Schwannoma.

BACKGROUND

The Penn Acoustic Neuroma Quality-of-Life (PANQOL) scale is a disease specific quality-of-life instrument for vestibular schwannoma, developed in English and subsequently validated in four major languages of the world. No such validated version of PANQOL exists for Hindi-speaking population.

OBJECTIVE

To translate and examine the validity of the PANQOL scale in a sample of Hindi-speaking patients recently diagnosed with vestibular schwannoma.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional study was done at a corporate tertiary care hospital. The PANQOL questionnaire was translated into Hindi by a language expert according to the accepted rules of forward-backward translation. In total, 30 consecutive patients (n = 30) diagnosed with vestibular schwannoma between September 2017 and March 2018 were included in the study. Quality-of-life at the time of diagnosis was measured with the generic Short Form -36 (SF-36) and the disease-specific PANQOL questionnaires. The internal consistency and reliability of the PANQOL domains, as well as the relationship with SF-36 dimensions, were statistically analyzed.The PANQOL scores of the patients in the current study were compared with those of similar such published studies worldwide.

RESULTS

Mean age of the patients was 46.3 ΁ 13.25 years. The sex ratio of male to female patients was 19:11. The mean PANQOL total score was 71.6. All its domains had good internal consistency except pain. Most PANQOL domains were correlated with those of the SF-36 dimensions, with the exception of facial dysfunction domain.

CONCLUSIONS

Good internal consistencies and strong correlations between PANQOL domains and SF-36 dimensions in the current study support the validity of the PANQOL Hindi version.