Background:
Exercise capacity serves as a direct
representation of cardiac function. The Duke Activity Status Index (DASI), a
self-administered 12-item questionnaire, covers aspects of daily living,
household tasks, sexual function, and physical activity. Although widely used to
evaluate exercise capacity, its validation in Chinese
cardiovascular disease
(CVD) patients has not
been thoroughly explored.
Considering
the significant cultural and lifestyle differences between China and Western
countries, which may influence Chinese patients’ comprehension and responses to
DASI, our objective is to culturally adapt DASI for Chinese patients with CVD to
ensure its precision in assessing exercise
capacity.
Methods:
The cultural
adaptation of the original DASI questionnaire into Chinese followed a rigorous
process to ensure its validity, reliability, and sensitivity to Chinese CVD
patients. The study included 107 outpatients diagnosed with CVD who completed the
DASI and cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). Cronbach’s alpha, Spearman
correlation, and factor analysis were utilized to test reliability and validity.
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was employed to assess the
prognostic utility of the DASI.
Results:
Participants had a mean DASI
score of 39.40
10.75 and a peak oxygen uptake (Peak
) of 19.53
5.89 mL/min/kg. The Chinese version of the DASI exhibited satisfactory
reliability and validity in CVD patients, with a Chronbach’s alpha coefficient of
0.706. The DASI score demonstrated a moderate correlation with Peak
measured by CPET (r = 0.67,
p
0.001). Factor analysis yielded three
factors, accounting for 56.76% of the total variance, with factor 1 contributing
to 26.38% of the variance. ROC curve analysis demonstrated that the DASI
exhibited discriminative utility in the identification of patients with improved
long-term prognosis (
p
0.001). The ROC curve had an area of 0.788
[95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.704–0.871]. The DASI score
36.85 served as the optimal
threshold for enhanced long-term prognosis, exhibiting a sensitivity of 0.80 and
a specificity of 0.69.
Conclusions:
The culturally adapted DASI
questionnaire is a straightforward and efficient tool for reasonably evaluating
exercise capacity in Chinese CVD patients.