Psychometric Analysis Of The Chinese Version Rotterdam Symptom Checklist And Its Application In The Correlation Research Of Symptom Experience And Quality Of Life In HCC Patients

Objective The purpose of this study was to translate the The Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL) into Chinese and evaluate the psychometric properties of this version. The original RSCL is a 39 item, patient-rated measure that was developed to assess common cancer-related physical and psychological symptoms.Methods In this study,a two-phase design was used. Phase I involved iterative forward-backward translation,testing of content validity (CVI) and a pretest. Phase II established the psychometric properties of the Chinese version RSCL (RSCL-Ch). Results showed that the RSCL-Ch achieved CVI of 0.95. A convenience sample of 102 patients at the early treatment stage was recruited for evaluation.Results Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the construct validity of the RSCL-Ch, with a good fit between the factor structure of the original version and our present sample data. The internal consistency reliability of subscales and total RSCL-Ch was moderately high, with Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from 0.77 to 0.91. The test-retest intraclass correlation results for the subscale and total RSCL-Ch ranged from 0.86-0.98. The subscale scores of RSCL-Ch were moderately correlated with the MSAS and ECOG PS score (P < 0.05). Conclusion Our study shows that the RSCL-Ch has adequate psychometric properties of validity and reliability, and can be used to assess symptoms during cancer therapy and at the early treatment stage in Chinese-speaking patients. Background HCC is the fifth common malignancies,involving more than half a million new cases yearly,and its incidence will further increase,to reach a plateau in 2015～2020.In the process of disease progression,HCC patients accompanyed with lots of symptoms,these unpleasant symptoms not only create distree,but also disrupt social functioning,then lower the quality of life(QOL) of patients.Methods Cross-sectional study.All the participants were recruited from the general surgery department of the first affiliated hospital of Anhui Medical University and the second hospital of Anhui Medical University.Use FACT-Hep and RSCL-Ch to assess the quality of life and symptom experiences of HCC patients respectively in the second day of admission to hospital.Results The most frequent symptom of HCC patients is worring,fatigue and anxiety.Worrying distressing HCC patients the most.The number of symptom has negative corrlation with health-related quality of life(r=-0.72,P<0.001).Physcial symptom distress,ECOG PS score,quality of life in RSCL and coexistence with other chronic disease can predit the quality of life in HCC patient,R square is 0.73.Conclusion In HCC patients,because they were no longer respond well to the treatment,symptom control will be an effective way to improve their QOL.This study explore the relationship between symptoms and QOL,of which would give the basis data te develop the symptom management research of HCC patients in order to improve their quality of life as the ultimate goal of benefiting them.