Translation and cultural adaptation of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Cervical Dysplasia (FACIT-CD) to evaluate quality of life in women with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia

OBJECTIVE: To translate and perform the cultural adaptation of the tool Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Cervical Dysplasia (FACIT-CD) to the Portuguese language. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study, with translation and cultural adaptation of the assessment tool performed according to international guidelines and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT) protocol group. It involved eight experts, six from Brazil, one from Portugal and one from the United States. After translation and back-translation of the tool, the semantic analysis process was carried out. We randomly included 20 women aged between 18 and 70 years with altered cervical cytology exam, seen at the Department of Prevention and Gynecologic Oncology - Hospital de Câncer de Barretos. RESULTS: The sample consisted of women with low education level. In the first pre-test, ten women participated and half of them considered the questions CD1, CD2 and CD3 as difficult, because they did not understand the meaning of the term “pelvic area”. The question CD5, “I worry about spreading the infection”, was also considered difficult to understand by five women. After the reconsideration of the expert committee and FACIT group, the second pre-test was performed. At this stage, we concluded that the previously raised understanding problems had been solved. CONCLUSION: The translated version of FACIT-CD in universal Portuguese language is equivalent to the original version in English and was easily understood by patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.