Quality of life in multiple sclerosis: translation in French Canadian of the MSQoL-54

BACKGROUND Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease which runs its course for the remainder of the patient's life frequently causing disability of varying degrees. Negative effects on Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) are well documented and a subject of clinical study. The Multiple Sclerosis QOL 54 (MSQOL-54) questionnaire was developed to measure HRQOL in patients with MS. It is composed of 54 items, and is a combination of the SF-36 and 18 disease-specific items. OBJECTIVE The objective of this project was to translate the MSQOL-54 into French Canadian, and to make it available to the Canadian scientific community for clinical research and clinical practice. METHODS Across all French speaking regions, there are occurrences of variation. They include the pronunciation, sentence structure, and the lexicon, where the differences are most marked. For this reason, it was decided to translate the US original MSQOL-54 into French Canadian instead of adapting the existing French version. The SF-36 has been previously validated and published in French Canadian, therefore the translation work was performed solely on the 18 MS specific items. The translation followed an internationally accepted methodology into 3 steps: forward translation, backward translation, and patients' cognitive debriefing. RESULTS Instructions and Items 38, 43, 45 and 49 were the most debated. Problematic issues mainly resided in the field of semantics. Patients' testing (n = 5) did not reveal conceptual problems. The questionnaire was well accepted, with an average time for completion of 19 minutes. CONCLUSION The French Canadian MSQOL-54 is now available to the Canadian scientific community and will be a useful tool for health-care providers to assess HRQOL of patients with MS as a routine part of clinical practice. The next step in the cultural adaptation of the MSQOL-54 in French Canadian will be the evaluation of its psychometric properties.