Patient Satisfaction with and Acceptance of Their Totally-Implanted Central Venous Catheter: Construction and First Validation of a Questionnaire

Abstract

Rationale : Most cancer patients require a totally-implanted Central Venous Catheter (CVC) for their treatment. We develop and validate a French-language questionnaire dubbed QASICC (Questionnaire for Acceptance of and Satisfaction with Implanted Central Venous Catheter) assessing patient satisfaction with and acceptance of their CVC. Method : The construction and first validation of the questionnaire was made using validated methodology consisting in four phases. Phase 1 aimed at collecting a comprehensive list of relevant items. Phase 2 consisted in converting items into questions followed by a first item selection procedure. Phase 3 tested the acceptance of the provisional module to a small number of patients. Phase 4 involved a first validation on patients to determine its psychometric characteristics. Results : Responses to the questionnaire were collected from 215 patients. The final tool included 27 questions assessing seven dimensions: pain, contribution to the comfort of the treatment, esthetics and privacy, impact on professional activities, social and sports, impact on daily activities, local discomfort and overall satisfaction. Conclusions : This first statistical validation seems very promising and allows us to confirm the structure and the psychometric properties of the tool. Further validation studies are required on standard and specific populations in order to confirm these first results.