Introduction: Measurement of quality of life has gained increasing acceptance in the assessment of functional and organic gastrointestinal diseases.
Aim of the study: The purpose of study is the Hungarian adaptation and validation of a disease-specific questionnaire and the assessment of quality of life in patients with functional dyspepsia.
Methods: Validation has been performed on small groups of normal and functional dyspepsia patients. Then, one-hundred-one Helicobacter pylori positive, 98 Helicobacter pylori negative functional dyspepsia patients and 123 healthy controls have been enrolled in a prospective, controlled study. Dyspeptic symptoms were identified according to the Rome II criteria and the symptomatic subgroups (ulcer-like, dysmotility-like and alternate forms) were identified. Organic diseases were excluded by upper endoscopy and abdominal ultrasound. Helicobacter pylori infection was confirmed by the modified Giemsa stain and urease test. Healthy controls were referred by the Dimension Insurance Company and underwent gastroenterologic screening. Quality of life was assessed by the "Functional Digestive Disorders Quality of Life Questionnaire", developed by the MAPI Research Institute, Lyon, France, translated and validated in Hungarian. The effect of demographic variables on the quality of life was determined by multiple regression analysis.
Results: The psychometric features of the Hungarian version were similar with the original questionnaire. The standardized and transformed life quality score was of 56.3 (confidence interval: 53.3-57.7) in Helicobacter pylori positive, 60.1 (confidence interval: 58.0-62.0) in Helicobacter negative dyspeptic patients and 76.2 (confidence interval: 74.6-77.8) in healthy controls (p = 0.0001). In both dyspeptic groups life quality was significantly worse than in controls, irrespective of Helicobacter pylori status. There was no significant differences in life quality scores in subgroups of ulcer-like, dysmotility-like and mixed form of dyspepsia. Only increasing age and female gender influenced the quality of life in dyspeptic patients.
Conclusions: The disease-specific instrument used was able to discriminate healthy people from dyspeptic patients. Both Helicobacter pylori positive and negative patients have an impaired quality of life as compared to controls. Demographic variables have a modest influence on the quality of life of dyspeptic patients.