Evaluation of the Farsi‐translated Hemorrhoidal Disease Symptom Score and Short Health Scale questionnaires in patients with hemorrhoid disease: A cross‐sectional study

Abstract

Background and Aims: The Hemorrhoidal Disease Symptom Score (HDSS) is a tool that is scored based on five main symptoms: pain, bleeding, itching, soiling, and prolapse. Furthermore, the Short Health Scale (SHS) is a measurement tool of subjective health and health-related quality of life. This study was performed to validate the Farsi-translated Hemorrhoidal Disease Symptom Score (HDSS), and Scale Short Health Scale adapted for hemorrhoidal disease (SHS-HD) as a measure of symptom severity in patients with hemorrhoid disease.Methods: In this study, HDSS and SHS-HD were translated into Farsi. Participants with confirmed hemorrhoid disease completed the questionnaire. Subsequently, the questionnaire's discriminative validity, convergent validity, reliability, sensitivity, and specificity were evaluated.Results: Data from 31 patients were analyzed (mean age 39.68; 71% male). The results of the analysis showed good internal consistency as Cronbach's α for HDSS and SHS were 0.994 and 0.995 respectively. Spearman's correlation coefficient for the test-retest comparison was 0.986 (p < 0.01). The responses demonstrated good convergent validity. Moreover, the comprehension and suitability of each question were rated as excellent (Pearson's correlation coefficient = 0.3).Conclusions: Our findings revealed that the Farsi translation of the HDSS and SHS-HD can be a valuable tool for evaluating the symptom severity in patients with hemorrhoid disease.