Abstract
Quality of life assessment among patients with brain tumors is important, given that new treatments have increased patient survival. The aim of this study was to translate the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Brain (FACT-Br) questionnaire (version 4) into Portuguese, carry out cross-cultural adaptation and assess its reproducibility. Cohort at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp). Forty patients with a brain tumor seen at the neuro-oncology outpatient clinic participated in the study. The process of translation and back-translation was carried out, along with adaptation to the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to test the reproducibility of the FACT-Br (version 4). The reproducibility of the questionnaire was excellent (ICC = 0.95; 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.89-0.97). The ICC with a mean interval of 15 days between applications of the questionnaire was very good in all domains (ICC = 0.87 to 0.95). The mean time taken to answer the questionnaire was 6.27 ± 2.26 minutes, ranging from 3 to 11 minutes. The translated version of the FACT-Br questionnaire (version 4) adapted to the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture proved to be easily understood and achieved very good reproducibility among patients with diagnoses of brain tumors.
Highlights
The incidence of central nervous system tumors in Brazil was found to range from 5.8 to 8.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants among men and from 4.9 to 7.1 cases among women in 2007.1 These tumors varied in malignancy, but even the so-called benign tumors can have high morbidity and mortality rates, depending on their location
All consecutive patients over 18 years of age with a histologically proven brain tumor who presented a minimum score of ≥ 24 for literate or ≥ 13 for illiterate individuals in the MiniMental State Examination (MMSE)[13] and were not undergoing chemotherapy/radiotherapy treatment were included
Five were not included because they presented scores below the cutoff points for the MMSE; one was excluded due to a stroke during the study period; and one was excluded because of failure to return for the second visit
Summary
The incidence of central nervous system tumors in Brazil was found to range from 5.8 to 8.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants among men and from 4.9 to 7.1 cases among women in 2007.1 These tumors varied in malignancy, but even the so-called benign tumors can have high morbidity and mortality rates, depending on their location. Some histological types of benign tumors may develop into malignant tumors.[2,3]. Tools for measuring quality of life provide a useful way to transform subjective measurements into objective data that can be quantified and analyzed. Such tools are important for determining the impact of interventions on patients’ health and quality of life.[10]
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