Home mechanical ventilation is a reliable treatment for patients suffering from chronic
respiratory failure, improving survival and quality of life. Prevalence has been increasing
worldwide as a result of evolving technical possibilities, telemedicine and improving
national guidelines. Projects to establish a national guideline and registry for patients
treated with home mechanical ventilation are currently under way in Hungary and our
aim was to validate a quality of life questionnaire suited for evaluation and follow
up in this specific patient group. The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Questionnaire
(SRI) is a quality of life tool designed to evaluate patients receiving home mechanical
ventilation and has been validated both in patient groups receiving invasive and noninvasive
ventilation.The Hungarian version of the SRI was created using the translation-backtranslation
method, which was then tested for validity, viability and reliability in a cohort
involving patients from three centers, receiving long-term home mechanical ventilation
for chronic respiratory failure through an invasive or noninvasive interface. Patient
data was collected (demographic data, lung function test, arterial blood gas, ventilation
settings) and quality of life was measured with the previously validated SF-36 and
newly created Hungarian SRI Questionnaires at two time points.One hundred four patients
receiving home mechanical ventilation were enrolled. The time to complete the SRI
Questionnaire was 8.6 (±3.1) minutes, 69.2% questionnaires were self-administered.
Exploratory factor analysis explained 73.8% of the variance of the questionnaire,
but resulted in 13 scales. We found correlations between the SRI subscale scores to
corresponding scales of the previously validated general quality of life survey SF-36.
The Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.928 for the Summary Scale of the SRI Questionnaire,
proving high internal consistency. Reproducibility was high for most scales, resulting
in a high overall correlation for the summary score (0.877, p < 0.001).The Hungarian
version of the SRI Questionnaire is a viable, valid, reliable and reproduceable quality
of life tool applicable for patients treated with home mechanical ventilation.
