Quality of life after restorative proctocolectomy for ulcerative colitis: different questionnaires lead to different interpretations.
BACKGROUND
According to some researchers, health-related quality-of-life scores for patients who undergo restorative proctocolectomy (RPC) for ulcerative colitis (UC) are comparable to those of healthy control subjects. Other studies show evidence that patients who undergo RPC experience a health-related quality of life similar to patients with mild UC or UC in remission.


HYPOTHESIS
The discrepancy in health-related quality-of-life scores among studies may be due to different health-related quality-of-life analyses.


DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.


SETTING
Outpatient clinic of a tertiary care center.


PATIENTS
In the first phase of the study, we consecutively enrolled 24 patients with UC, 24 patients with Crohn disease, and 24 healthy controls. In the second phase of the study, 40 patients who underwent RPC, 43 patients with UC, and 44 controls were consecutively enrolled.


INTERVENTIONS
We administered an Italian version of the Cleveland Global Quality of Life (CGQL) instrument, the Padova Inflammatory Bowel Disease Quality of Life instrument, and the Italian 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
We evaluated the construct validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, sensitivity to change, and discriminant ability of the Italian CGQL instrument. We compared its discriminative ability with that of the Padova Inflammatory Bowel Disease Quality of Life instrument.


RESULTS
The Italian CGQL instrument obtained good construct validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and sensitivity to change. The Italian CGQL score did not distinguish patients who underwent RPC from healthy controls and those with mild UC or UC in remission, while the Padova Inflammatory Bowel Disease Quality of Life instrument reported similar scores for patients who underwent RPC and those with mild UC or UC in remission, and showed a difference vs healthy controls.


CONCLUSIONS
We validated an Italian version of the CGQL score. The different results obtained with the CGQL and the Padova Inflammatory Bowel Disease Quality of Life instruments can be attributed to the different discriminative ability of the 2 questionnaires.