Abstract:
Low Anterior Resection Syndrome (LARS) is a collection of troublesome symptoms
that patients experience after surgical removal of the rectum for rectal cancer. The
LARS questioner is a self-administered tool that has been widely used and validated
in different settings after being translated to several languages. The study aims to
validate the Sinhala translation of the said questionnaire.
This will be a validation study conducted at the Professorial Surgical Unit of the
North Colombo Teaching Hospital. English version of the LARS questionaire will be
translated to Sinhala and backward translated by independent translators and assessed
by an expert panel. Questioner will be given to patients who have undergone low
anterior resection between years 2000 and 2015 as a self-administered questionnaire
after obtaining written informed consent.
Data analysis is based on the LARS scoring protocol for each question. Principal
component analysis will be used to identify the underlying themes measured or
captured by the questionnaire. The validity and reliability will be assessed by
Cronabach's alpha, interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Pearson's correlation
coefficient. A reliability of more than 0.7 is generally considered adequate prior to
using a validated psychometric tool.
