What’s in a Number? Assessing the Burden of Diverticular Disease

Mariam N. Hantouli et al.

INTRODUCTION

Annually, nearly 3 million Americans are diagnosed with diverticulitis, and 1 in 4 have recurrent episodes.^1,2 The American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons recommends individualizing the decision to operate based on the impact of diverticular disease on quality of life (QoL), rather than measures such as diverticulitis episode count.³ Measuring the impact of diverticular disease requires the use of standardized and validated tools that address both the patients’ function and well-being.⁴ Patient-reported outcome measures are increasingly incorporated into surgical research to assess the impact of disease on health-related QoL. To translate guidelines into practice, clinicians need a meaningful measure of diverticular disease burden linked to treatment recommendations. The diverticulitis quality of life survey (DVQOL) is a health-related QoL measure that was developed to assess diverticular disease burden on patients across 4 domains of function and well-being: physical symptoms, concerns, emotions, and behavioral changes.⁵ The DVQOL has not been adopted in practice, in part because there is a lack of evidence about its correlation with other QoL measures like work and activity impairment, and in part because there is uncertainty about whether the DVQOL is better correlated than episode count to other QoL measures or not. In this study we aim to (1) assess the correlation between the DVQOL and other expressions of disease measures including work impairment, activity impairment, and contentment with gastrointestinal (GI)-related health and (2) assess whether the DVQOL is better correlated than diverticulitis episode count with these measures.

LEGGI TUTTO https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9780040/#__ffn_sectitle