Patients affected by heart failure have a compromised quality of life (QOL) and in the last few years "health related quality of life" has become an important outcome indicator for the evaluation of heart failure treatment.
Methods: Translation into Italian of the Left Ventricular Dysfunction Questionnaire (LVD-36), a new, 36-item, disease-specific health status instrument for patients with congestive heart failure, and its subsequent validation by administration to 50 consecutive patients in our heart failure outpatient clinic. The Italian LVD-36 was compared to the "The Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire" (MLHF).
Results: The Italian version of the LVD-36 correlates well with MLHF for ejection fraction (EF), NYHA class I and II, etiology and therapy. Since, however, the LVD-36 has only one domain, it may be able to offer more synthetic information than MLHF about patients' status.
Conclusions: The Italian version of the LVD-36 appears to be a reliable instrument for assessing patients' QOL and the degree of limitations imposed on them by the disease. It is short, clear and easy to complete. In patients with heart failure the LVD-36 correlates well with the MLHF and may be considered a new disease-specific instrument to estimate changes in health status, and an useful support in optimizing therapeutic options.