FRI0652 The development and validation of familial mediterrenean fever quality of life scale (FMF-QOL)
Authors: C. Unal, M. T. Duruoz
Journal: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2018)

<h3>Background:</h3> Quality of life (QoL) was negatively affected in FMF patients. A QoL scale specific to FMF is not existing in the literature. <h3>Objectives:</h3> To develop valid and reliable quality of life scale in familial Mediterranean fever (FMF). <h3>Methods:</h3> The psychometric method was used to develop the FMF-QoL. In the first step, the question pool was formed by using existing QoL scales in the literature. Outpatients with FMF according to Livneh criteria were recruited. After patients' interviews, some identical and irrelevant questions eliminated and new ones were added by an expert committee. Cognitive debriefing interviews concerning QoL were done with another 20 FMF patients. Minor changes (few words) after these interviews were made. In the second step, the preFMF-QoL with 101 questions was formed and it was filled out by FMF patients. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) by varimax rotation, assessment of data' skewness and kurtosis, evaluation of invalid questions and participants were performed. After this, the internal consistency with Cronbach alpha was calculated. The face, content and construct validities were assessed. Convergent validity which was the relation of the FMF-QoL with functional parameters (Europe Health Impact Scale (EUROHIS), Short Form 36 (SF36), Beck Depression Inventory for Primary Care (BDI-PC), Jenkins Sleep Scale (JSS), Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) and the discriminant validity which was the relation of the FMF-QoL with nonfunctional parameters such as demographic and clinical characteristics were analyzed. The Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Spearman correlation coefficient (rho) were used to compare quantitative variables. <h3>Results:</h3> In our study, the FMF-QoL was applied to 125 FMF patients however 123 (84 women) patients were designed to statistical analysis. It has been determined by the expert committee that the face and content validity of the FMF-QoL was good. According to the factor analysis the FMF-QoL were represented by 4 factor groups (eigenvalues &gt;1) which were physical impact, social and recreational impact, psychological impact, and sleep impact factors. All question's factor loadings after Varimax rotation were bigger than 0.5 and the cumulative variance of the scale was 68.11%. The strongest correlation of the FMF-QoL was found with other QoL scales like EUROHIS (rho: -0.64, p&lt;0.01) and SF36-physical functioning subscale (rho: -0.63, p&lt;0.01). The correlations between the FMF-QoL and other functional parameters were found to be moderate [BDI-PC (rho: 0.46, p&lt;0.01), JSS (rho: 0.44, p&lt;0.01), HAQ (rho: 0.44, p&lt;0.01)]. This shows that the FMF-QoL has good convergent validity. In the discriminative validity, most of the parameters had not significant correlation with the FMF-QoL. Only the number of attacks in the previous year, age and education level were correlated moderately with the FMF-QoL. This shows the FMF-QoL has discriminative validity. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> The FMF-QoL scale was developed with psychometric method. It is a valid and reliable disease specific scale which has 20 questions with 4 factors. It is already a practical, not time consuming that can be used in the clinical follow-up and the treatment evaluation. <h3>Disclosure of Interest:</h3> None declared