Purpose: In the past we have developed and validated the hernia-specific quality of life assessment instrument, HERQL, for groin hernias. In current study we evaluated the conceptual structure and validated HERQL for abdominal wall hernias.
Methods: Subjective quality-of-life perceptions from abdominal wall hernia patients were assessed. Clinical responsiveness was evaluated comparing treatment naïve with follow-up hernia patients. Measurement invariance between groin and abdominal wall hernias was approached with structural equation modeling (SEM). Subgroup comparisons were conducted between primary ventral and incisional hernias, as well as the presence of co-morbidity, hernia incarceration, surgical complications, and recurrent abdominal wall hernias.
Results: A total of 775 HERQL assessments, including 167 from abdominal wall hernias, were successfully performed. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the summative pain, worse symptoms for treatment-naïve patients, and improving summative pain scores across the pre-operative, immediately post-operative, and post-operative 3-month assessments indicating clinical responsiveness were observed and comparable between groin and abdominal wall hernias. Configural invariance was evidenced by that the same model held true for both types of hernias with multi-group SEM, while mean structure exploration showed that abdominal wall hernia patients reported less latent summative pain (- 0.535, p < 0.0001) but worse latent quality-of-life score (0.207, p < 0.0001). Patients with peri-operative complications suffered from worse pain during mild activities (2.7 versus 1.5, p = 0.01), and patients with recurrent hernias reported compromised global health/quality of life (2 versus 1.6, p = 0.001).
Conclusions: The study successfully validated and extended the clinical applicability of HERQL across distinct types of hernias. Measurement invariance was ascertained and the same HERQL construct could be administered for both abdominal wall and groin hernias in Taiwan.
Keywords: Abdominal wall hernia; Chronic pain; HERQL; Quality of life; Structural equation modeling; Validation study.