Study On Examining The Traditional Chinese Medicine Quality Of Life Scale Of Parkinson Disease

Background:Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)therapies can not only reduce Madopar'samount used and the side effects on treating Parkinson disease(PD), but alsoreduce the speed of PD's aggravation, and emerge its advantages in the qualityof life(QOL) of PD patients. This conforms to the present goal of treating PD.However there is not any unified scale to evaluate the effects of TCMobjectively and accurately. It is inappropriate to use those scales which wereused in the west medicine to evaluate the effects of TCM. It is difficult toassess the treatment superiorty of TCM, especially in the field of QOL becauseof the differences between the backgrounds of economy, culture and societyof the two medical science systems. To make these advantages approved by WesternMedication, an effective and more targeted PD evaluation system of TCM isurgently needed.Objective:To examine feasibility, reliability and validity of the TCM QOL scaleof PD, so as to aplly it to be examined and revised in the country by the NationalParkinson's disease Association, making it as a scientific rating scale inthe TCM effects of PD around the country, which can tell the characters andadvantages of TCM.Methods:The research adopted cross-sectional study methods, which is based on theprocess of QOL questionnaire development. Measureing 125 PD patients by thescale and Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale(UPDRS) at the sametime. Meanwhil, 27 chronic disease patiens who were not PD and 94 persons without any disease, those who were among 35～88 years old were measured. And UPDRSwas required to be the gold standard scale. At last, SPSS13.0 was used tocalculate feasibility, Cronbach alpha, discriminant validity, constructvalidity, criterion-related validity and content validity.Results:1. According to the result, the rotations of acceptance and completion wereboth more than 85%.All the items were finished in 20 minite. These meantthe scale was well accepted.2. Coefficients of Cronbach alpha of all facets and domains in the scale wereabove 0.7 except the facet of diet and excrement(0.5457), the facet ofother(0.5549), the domains of psychologist/psyche(0.982).That meant theinternal consistency reliability was good.3. There were both statistical significance (P＜0.05) between PD patiens andthe chronic disease patiens, and between PD patiens and the people withoutany disease. That meant the discriminant validity was good.4. There were 6 public factors in the scale through Principal component factoranalysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin was 0.873, its eigenvalue was above 1,and the cumulative rotation was 65.684%.But there were still two itemscouldn't be explained by these public factors. That meant the constructvalidity was not so good.5. Compared with UPDRS, there are good correlations among domains. It showedthat the scale's criterion-related validity was good.6. In addition to the item 17 and 19, the other items of the scale were seriouslycorrelated to their own domains but little correlated to the others. Thisstudy had been selected and discussed by the experts. It was followedprinciples of making QOL scales in WHO and the items were selected accordingto the procedure. The items now in the scale reflect the key points of PD.Conclusion:The Traditional Chinese Medicine QOL scale of PD has good feasibility,discriminant validity and criterion-related validity. The internalconsistency reliability and content validity were not so good. The constructvalidity can not be sure. The scale should be deeply examined and revised inmore place with more case.