Translation and validation of ICIQ-FLUTS for tamil speaking women

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Research in to lower urinary tract symptoms in South Asia is hampered by lack of validated tools. There fore ouraimwas to validate the International Consultation onIncontinencemodular questionnaire on female lower urinary tracts ymptoms (ICIQ-FLUTS) from English toTamil. METHOD: The ICIQ-FLUTS was translated to Tamil and a validation study was carried out among women attending the gynaecology clinic at district general hospital-Mannar. RESULTS: Content validity assessed by the level of missing data was less than 2%. Construct validity was assessed by the ability of the questionnaire to identify patients with incontinence (n=45) from controls (n=93) using the incontinence score (patients=7.7 SD=4.7, controls=1.4 SD=2.2, p<0.001) andthose with symptomatic anterior wall prolapse (n=16) fromcontrols (n=93) using the voiding symptoms score (patients=4.8SD=2.3, controls=0.3 SD=0.8, p<0.001). Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’scoefficient alpha score (0.80 (0.77-0.81). Test–retest reliability assessed by weighted kappa (k) ranged from 0.73to0.87. Patients with incontinence (n=30, pre-treatment incontinence score=7.9, SD=4.9 versus post-treatment incontinence score=3.3, SD=3.1) and symptomatic anterior wall prolapse (n=14, pre-operative voiding symptoms score=4.9 SD=2.5 versus post-operative voiding symptoms score=0.9 SD=1.5) showed an improvement with treatment (Wilcoxon matched –pairs signedranktestp< 0.001 and p<0.01respectively). An incontinence score≥3 (sensitivity=86.7%, specificity=78.4%) and a voiding symptoms score≥3 (sensitivity=87.5%, specificity=96.2%) detected any form of incontinence and symptomatic anterior wall prolapse respectively.CONCLUSION: The Tamil translation of ICIQ-FLUTS has retained the psychometric properties of the original English questionnaire and will be an invaluable tool to elicit LUTS among Tamil speaking women.