Turkish reliability and validty of eustachian tube dysfunction questionnaire-7

The Eustachian tube (ET) has very important functions for the middle ear cavity, such as ventilation, clearance and protection. When it is unable to fulfill this functions the eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD) occurs. At the beginning Eustachian tube dysfunction causes symptoms like congestion initially slight fullness due to the constant negative pressure in the middle ear cavity. when the event becomes chronic, may cause recurrent otitis media with effusion, retraction of the tympanic membrane, chronic otitis media and hearing loss. McCoul et al. have developed a test in 2012 to assess the problems caused by ETD in clinical practice and to show benefits of the treatment. This 7 item questionnaire named as Eustachian Tube Dysfunction Questionnaire (ETDQ-7). Besides routinely used invasive methods this Likert-type scale can be applied practically for the determination of ETD diagnosis and/or improvements of treatment. In this study we aimed to investigate validation and reliability of the Turkish version of ETDQ-7 for Turkish population. Fourty patients above 18 years old, diagnosed with ETD and age-gender mached 40 healthy individuals as control group enrolled for the study. After language validation of the ETDQ-7 for Turkish, scale applied to the all the cases and the control group. For assessment of the Validity of the scale 'known groups' method was used. For assessing reliability of scale, the test-retest method as internal consistency analysis was performed. At internal consistency reliability testing of the ETDQ-7 yielded a Cronbach α of 0.714 for the entire instrument. The scale applied to 15 patients 2-3 weeks later second time to determine test-retest reliability. The test–retest reliability for this group was good (Spearman rank correlation coefficient = 0.792), indicating correlation between the two questionnaires completed by the same patient over time. For the evaluation of the discriminant validity of the scale, separately and total scores of each items of ETDQ-7, statistically significant difference was detected between ETD group and control group (p <0.001). As a conclusion, Turkish version of Eustachian Tube Dysfunction Questionnaire-7 has found to be highly valid and reliable in Turkish language. This scale can be used in the diagnosis of patients with ETD and for determination of disease severity in terms of treatment follow-up among Turkish population.