Death anxiety scale; translation and validation in patients with cardiovascular disease

ABSTRACT

Patients with cardiovascular disease [CVD] have the symptoms of anxiety in common that may result in adverse outcomes. Due to the significant association of anxiety and CVD, scheduled screening of all cardiac patients has been recommended by the medical authorities like the American Heart Association. But in Pakistan it is not a common practice to use such tools, reason being unavailability of such screening tools in national language therefore specifically death anxiety is unrecognized and no measures are taken for it and patients remain undertreated with death anxiety that may eventually influence on the treatment and prognosis of the patients. Colleges and hospitals of the Rawalpindi and Islamabad. 6 months. The study was designed to translate and validate the Death Anxiety Scale in Urdu language to be used with Pakistani population. The sample consisted of 210 participants [70 Youngsters [normal group] 70 Elderly and 70 patients with cardiovascular diseases [clinical group] from colleges and hospitals of the Rawalpindi and Islamabad. To determine the psychometric properties, reliability and validity; cronbach alpha, split-half reliability, correlation, factor analysis were computed. Death Anxiety Scale-Urdu [DAS-U][] has adequate reliability and validity. Factor analysis showed multifaceted structure for the DAS-U, bearing in mind the apposite psychometric characteristics; it can be used in researches about death anxiety. The use of the scale is reasonable for the measurement of death anxiety in CVD patients and it can be employed in order to have successful treatment and improve the prognosis of the patients