Psychometric properties of Bengali version of QOLIE-10 in epileptic patients

Assessment of Quality of Life in Epilepsy has currently been emphasized to provide comprehensive care to patients. AIM: To develop and standardize and assess the psychometric properties of Bengali version of QOLIE-10 and to assess the relationship of quality of life with seizure variables and presence of psychiatric morbidity. DESIGN: English QOLIE-10 was translated into Bengali by a translation committee using translation-re-translation technique. Inter-rater reliability between the English and Bengali version was assessed during initial practice session held amongst 20 bilingual patients. It was found that item 3 (related to driving) was reported to have difficulty in answering by all the patients as none drove any vehicle. Thus, this item was dropped. The inter-rater reliability of the resultant 9 item scale was found to be high (kappa = 0.9). One hundred and seven epilepsy patients attending the Epilepsy clinic were selected for the study if they met the following criteria: age >15 years, duration of seizure >1 year, regular intake of antiepileptic drugs, presence of informant and ability to read Bengali. For each patient, demographic and clinical data (seizure frequency, last seizure date, seizure type as per record, medicine intake history and records of past investigations such as EEG) was collected. Each patient were administered QOLIE-9 (Bengali) and SRQ-24 Bengali version to screen for psychiatric morbidity. RESULTS: The Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for QOLIE-9 was 0.81, which did not improve if any item was dropped. All items showed strong correlation with the total score. The instrument showed stable factor structure with three factors (Limitation, Depression, Illness effects). However, the item with regard to memory problem did not fit into any of the factors. The QOLIE-9 total showed a significant correlation with the seizure frequency (r = 0.76**). SRQ positive (i.e., suspected psychiatric morbidity) cases had higher QOLIE-9 score (thus, poorer quality of life) in comparison to non-psychiatric cases. CONCLUSION: Bengali QOLIE-9 is a valid and reliable instrument to assess the quality of life in patients suffering from epilepsy.