Funding outcome

Scoliosis is a 3-dimensional spinal deformity characterised by a lateral curvature and vertebral rotation affecting 2-3% of the adolescents. Eight females to 1 male progress to severities requiring surgical treatment. Scoliosis is associated with deterioration in health-related quality of life (QOL). Several questionnaires evaluate QOL in those with spinal deformities. However, the questionnaires available in English to date show poor measurement properties including high ceiling effects and limited correlations with scoliosis severity. Recently, the Italian Spine Youth Quality of Life (ISYQOL) questionnaire has been developed from patients and clinicians concerns and using Rasch analysis to address scaling limitations. Our English cross-cultural adaptation of the ISYQOL will be tested in this project. We will determine if our English translation of the ISYQOL will present low ceiling effects, reproducible results and have strong relation to the patients scores on other widely used questionnaires. One hundred participants will be recruited from the Edmonton scoliosis clinic and complete the questionnaires twice one week apart. We believe the cultural adaptation of the ISYQOL to English will solve problems identified with previous questionnaires. This questionnaire has the potential to be adopted widely as problems with existing questionnaires are well recognized as a limitation to document the effect of conservative interventions in patients with smaller scoliosis curves. Consistent with WCHRI relevance criteria, this project is innovative as the questionnaire has not yet been used in North America, embedded in our scoliosis clinic, results will likely influence the management of scoliosis widely which affects mostly females and developing adolescents. This tool may make it possible to document the effectiveness of conservative therapies which up to now could not be assessed properly with existing tools