BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders

Background: The Chronic Sinusitis Survey (CSS) is a valid, disease-specific questionnaire for assessing health status and treatment effectiveness in chronic rhinosinusitis. In the present study, we developed a Norwegian version of the CSS and assessed its psychometric properties. Methods: In the pooled data set of 65 patients from a trial of treatment for chronic sinusitis with long-standing symptoms and signs of sinusitis on computed tomography (CT), we assessed the reliability, validity and responsiveness of the CSS. Results: Test-retest reliability of the two CSS scales and the total scale ranged 0.87–0.92, while internal consistency reliability ranged 0.31–0.55. CSS subscale scores were associated with other items on sinusitis symptoms, and with the Mental health and Bodily pain scale of the SF-36. There was little association of the CSS scale scores with sinus CT findings. The patients with chronic sinusitis had worse scores on all three CSS scales than a healthy reference population (n = 42) (p < 0.001). The CSS sinus symptoms subscale and the total scale were sensitive to improvement in global symptoms during 12 weeks. Conclusion: The Norwegian version of the CSS had acceptable test-retest reliability, but lower internal consistency reliability than the accepted standard criteria. The results support the construct validity of the measure and the sinusitis symptoms subscale and the total scales were responsive to change. This supports the use of the questionnaire in interventions for chronic sinusitis, but points at problems with the internal consistency reliability. Background Sinusitis is a common condition that causes frequent physician visits. In the United States in 1999–2000, chronic sinusitis was accountable for more than 13 million ambulatory care visits, or 1.3 % of all visits [1]. The symptoms of chronic sinusitis are not easy to quantify [2] and show little association with computed tomography (CT) findings [3]. Postoperatively, imaging is also unreliable because of postoperative changes and scarring [4]. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has recently gained increased awareness as an outcome measure for interventions in chronic sinusitis [2,5-11]. Some studies of interventions in chronic sinusitis have used generic HRQoL measures, which are developed for use in a wide range of Published: 05 May 2006 BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders2006, 6:9 doi:10.1186/1472-6815-6-9 Received: 07 February 2006 Accepted: 05 May 2006 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6815/6/9 © 2006Stavem et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.