SUMMARY Despite a variety of measurement tools none can be recommended as gold st and ard for the assessment of dyspnoea .
A combination of unidimensional and multidimensional tools seems to be the best for clinical assessment .
PURPOSE OF REVIEW Refractory dyspnoea is a common and difficult to treat symptom in advanced disease .
Accurate assessment helps to guide treatment and prognosis .
RECENT FINDINGS The absence of commonly agreed assessment tools has been a significant barrier to improving care through inhibition of clinical research and limitation of clinicians ' ability to assess the effectiveness of their interventions .
Two recently published systematic review s on measurement tools for breathlessness identified a variety of tools but none could be recommended as gold st and ard .
For clinical purpose s , the combination of a unidimensional tool to assess dyspnoea severity and a multidimensional tool to evaluate the impact on a person 's quality of life seem most appropriate .
This review discusses the present evidence and puts forward a strategy for assessment and measurement of the symptom in clinical practice .
Establishing the minimal number of items for a responsive, valid, health-related quality of life instrument.
Reducing the number of items in a health-related quality of life instrument will enhance efficiency . However , it is important to maintain measurement properties . We determined the effect of reducing items from each domain ( dyspnea , fatigue , emotion and mastery ) of the 20-item Chronic Respiratory Question naire ( CRQ ) .  Three r and omized trials of respiratory rehabilitation provided data . We removed items one at a time from each domain in three orders : by item impact , item responsiveness , and at r and om . Responsiveness , test-retest reliability and construct validity were evaluated at each step . Responsiveness and reliability , evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficients ( ICC ) , were reduced marginally as the number of items was reduced to two items per domain . The deterioration was greatest when reducing from two items to one . To detect a particular effect , sample size would increase by about 10 % when reducing the number of items in a domain to 2 . Construct validity showed a more marked deterioration . Reducing to two items per domain would maintain responsiveness and reliability of the CRQ at an acceptable level , with a trade-off of reduced construct validity and increase in sample size requirements
SUMMARY Despite a variety of measurement tools none can be recommended as gold st and ard for the assessment of dyspnoea .
A combination of unidimensional and multidimensional tools seems to be the best for clinical assessment .
PURPOSE OF REVIEW Refractory dyspnoea is a common and difficult to treat symptom in advanced disease .
Accurate assessment helps to guide treatment and prognosis .
RECENT FINDINGS The absence of commonly agreed assessment tools has been a significant barrier to improving care through inhibition of clinical research and limitation of clinicians ' ability to assess the effectiveness of their interventions .
Two recently published systematic review s on measurement tools for breathlessness identified a variety of tools but none could be recommended as gold st and ard .
For clinical purpose s , the combination of a unidimensional tool to assess dyspnoea severity and a multidimensional tool to evaluate the impact on a person 's quality of life seem most appropriate .
This review discusses the present evidence and puts forward a strategy for assessment and measurement of the symptom in clinical practice .