Quality of life in hypertensive patients and concurrent validity of Minichal-Brazil.

BACKGROUND: Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaires (HRQOL) are humanistic outcome measure instruments both in clinical and in pharmacoeconomic studies. However, they should have their psychometric parameters evaluated so as to reflect the individual subjective assessment of quality of life. OBJECTIVES: To describe the quality of life profile of hypertensive patients and to assess the concurrent validity of the Minichal-Brazil instrument by comparing it to the generic World Health Organization's (WHO) assessment instrument known as WHOQOL-Bref. METHODS: A total of 191 adult patients (72.8% females) with hypertension were interviewed. Approximately one third of these patients had their hypertension controlled. The mean HRQOL as measured by the total Minichal score was 69.7 (SD = 19.2; 95%CI from 66.9 to 72.4); the "mental status" domain and "somatic manifestations" domain scores were 69.1 (95%CI from 66.1 to 72.2), and 69.9 (95%CI from 66.5 to 73.2), respectively. The means for the WHOQOL-Bref instrument were: in the "physical" domain = 61.5 (95%CI from 59.0 to 64.1); in the "psychological" domain = 65.7 (95%CI from 63.2 to 68.2); in the "social" domain = 72.3 (95%CI from 70.0 to 74.5); and in the "environment" domain = 59.7 (95%CI from 57.7 to 61.7). RESULTS: Minichal significantly correlated (p<0.001) with WHOQOL-Bref as regards all its domains, except for the "environment" domain, which did not correlate with the "somatic manifestations" domain. CONCLUSION: Minichal-Brazil proved to be a useful tool in the assessment of HRQOL in hypertensive patients.

[Patient satisfaction with pharmacy services: translation and validation of the Pharmacy Services Questionnaire for Brazil]. / Satisfação dos usuários com serviços da farmácia: tradução e validação do Pharmacy Services Questionnaire para o Brasil.

The aim of this study was to translate into Portuguese and validate the Pharmacy Services Questionnaire (PSQ). The instrument includes 20 questions that measure user satisfaction with pharmacy services, and is organized according to two factors. It uses a Likert scale of answers from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). The PSQ-Brazil was applied to 137 diabetics from 31 to 89 years of age (60.6% women), clients of private pharmacies, mostly users of public health services (65.7%), with low education (67.9% elementary schooling or less), and who used an average of 4.3 medicines per person. Overall score in the sample was 3.6 (SD = 1.1 [95%CI 3.4-3.8]). After factor analysis, 'pleasant exposure' and 'treatment management' included 8 and 12 items, respectively, and were significantly correlated with each other (r = 0.92, p < 0.001) and with the overall score. The instrument obtained a Cronbach's alpha of 0.98 for the overall score. The pleasant exposure and treatment management variables showed alphas of 0.94 and 0.98. PSQ-Brazil shows adequate reliability and validity for use in the country.