Translation and validation study of the Iranian version of Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire

Objective (s): Heart failure has implications for the quality of life for any age range. The Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) is the most commonly used instrument for evaluating quality of life inpatients with heart failure. It comprises 21 items and 3 dimensions: the physical, emotional and the total. The aim of this study was to translate and evaluate the reliability and validity of the Persian language version of the (MLHFQ) for use in heart failure patients before using this version in clinical practice. After permission, the questionnaire was translated. One hundred HF patients (mean age: 59±15 years; 61% male) were interviewed between December 2013 and April 2014. Reliability was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).Validity was tested with correlations between the MLHFQ scores and the SF-36 scores, in order to evaluate the construct validity, known-groups comparison (New York Heart Association [NYHA] Classes) was performed. The internal consistency of both total and subtotal scales was greater than 0.80. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.95 for the 3 MLHFQ scores and the ICC was also large 0.8. In addition, MLHFQ scores varied significantly with functional class (P<0.001), and there were intermediate-to high correlations with the assumed corresponding SF-36 dimensions (0.71-0.4). These results support the use of the MLHFQ in patients with heart failure and it can be considered as a disease-specific instrument to measure health outcomes in research and clinical settings. Further studies are recommended to assess the responsiveness to change of the Iranian version of the MLHFQ.