Presentation of a psychodiagnostic inventory measuring disease-specific quality of life in kidney transplant recipients

Survival, quality of life (QOL) and economic aspects are the main parameters by which therapy for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is evaluated. Until today there is a lack of inventories measuring disease-specific QOL in kidney transplanted patients. Therefore, the end-stage renal disease symptom checklist transplantation module (ESRD-SCL(TM)) a psychodiagnostic inventory measuring the specific physical and psychological QOL of ESRD patients after renal transplantation, is presented. It contains six scales with 43 items: limited physical capacity (10 items), limited cognitive capacity (8 items), cardiac and renal dysfunction (7 items), side effects of corticosteroids (5 items), increased growth of gum and hair (5 items), and transplantation-associated psychological distress (8 items). Considering responses of 458 ESRD patients after kidney transplantation the present study analyzed aspects of reliability (internal consistencies: Cronbach's alpha = 0.85 scale 1 to alpha = 0.76 scale 3) and validity (Pearson's correlation with the SF-36 Health Survey). In summary, the psychometric results support the usefulness of the questionnaire.