Evaluation of the Farsi‐translated Hemorrhoidal Disease Symptom Score and Short Health Scale questionnaires in patients with hemorrhoid disease: A cross‐sectional study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The Hemorrhoidal Disease Symptom Score (HDSS) is a tool that is scored based on five main symptoms: pain, bleeding, itching, soiling, and prolapse. Furthermore, the Short Health Scale (SHS) is a measurement tool of subjective health and health‐related quality of life. This study was performed to validate the Farsi‐translated Hemorrhoidal Disease Symptom Score (HDSS), and Scale Short Health Scale adapted for hemorrhoidal disease (SHS‐HD) as a measure of symptom severity in patients with hemorrhoid disease. METHODS: In this study, HDSS and SHS‐HD were translated into Farsi. Participants with confirmed hemorrhoid disease completed the questionnaire. Subsequently, the questionnaire's discriminative validity, convergent validity, reliability, sensitivity, and specificity were evaluated. RESULTS: Data from 31 patients were analyzed (mean age 39.68; 71% male). The results of the analysis showed good internal consistency as Cronbach's α for HDSS and SHS were 0.994 and 0.995 respectively. Spearman's correlation coefficient for the test–retest comparison was 0.986 (p < 0.01). The responses demonstrated good convergent validity. Moreover, the comprehension and suitability of each question were rated as excellent (Pearson's correlation coefficient = 0.3). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings revealed that the Farsi translation of the HDSS and SHS‐HD can be a valuable tool for evaluating the symptom severity in patients with hemorrhoid disease.