Validation of Urdu Version of the Low Anterior Resection Syndrome (LARS) Score

Imad Banday; Ajaz Ahmad Malik; Mohammad Abrar Khan; Fazl Parray; Rauf Ahmad Wani; Meeran Banday; Hanna Zahoor

doi:10.1007/s13193-023-01801-0

Validation of Urdu Version of the Low Anterior Resection Syndrome (LARS) Score

Indian J Surg Oncol. 2023 Dec;14(4):909-917. doi: 10.1007/s13193-023-01801-0. Epub 2023 Jul 29.

Authors

Imad Banday¹, Ajaz Ahmad Malik¹, Mohammad Abrar Khan¹, Fazl Parray², Rauf Ahmad Wani², Meeran Banday³, Hanna Zahoor⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of General and Minimal Invasive Surgery, Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, Srinagar India.
² Colorectal Division, Department of General and Minimal Invasive Surgery, Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, Srinagar India.
³ Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, Srinagar India.
⁴ Department of Radiodiagnosis and Imaging, Acharya Shri Chander College of Medical Sciences, Sidhra, Jammu India.

PMID: 38187850
PMCID: PMC10766916 (available on 2024-12-01)
DOI: 10.1007/s13193-023-01801-0

Abstract

Patients subjected to low anterior resection for rectal cancers experience a constellation of symptoms of disordered bowel function which leads to a detriment in the quality of life. The LAR syndrome (LARS) score is a self-administered questionnaire to identify and assess disordered bowel function after resective surgery. The objective of this study was to validate the Urdu version of the LARS score. The translation process was carried out in a fashion outlined by the original authors of the LARS score after obtaining proper permission. The validation of the translated version included the assessment of its reliability, convergent and discriminant validities, internal consistency, and confirmatory analyses. A total of 60 patients were enrolled in the study with a 95% power of study. The translated questionnaire was initially administered to a random subgroup of patients to verify the adequacy and degree of comprehension of questions. Then reproducibility was investigated by a test-retest procedure. An analysis was then done to determine the correlation between Urdu LARS score and a quality of life related question that was included along with the questionnaire. The Urdu version of the LARS score demonstrates a high convergent validity in terms of its correlation with self-reported quality of life. It also demonstrated its efficacy to discriminate between clinical variables expected to differ with regards to LARS. There was almost perfect agreement in the test and retest values demonstrating good reliability across all instruments. The Urdu version of the LARS score has proven to be a reliable and a valid tool for measuring LARS in the Urdu speaking population of the Indian subcontinent.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13193-023-01801-0.

Keywords: LAR; LARS; QoL; Rectal cancer; TME; Validation.

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