Abstract
Purpose: Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) has been widely accepted as one possible QOL scale to evaluate upper gastrointestinal disease. The aim of this study was to verify the validation of GSRS for postoperative disorder and QOL of upper gastrointestinal disease. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional survey study was performed in 4 institutes from June to December 2012. The inclusion criteria were outpatients with digestive symptoms, 20 or over, be followed up more than 6 months and less than 5 years after surgery for gastric or esophageal carcinoma, no recurrence or other neoplastic disease. The descriptive statistics of GSRS subscales which consisted of reflux, abdominal pain, indigestion, diarrhea and constipation were evaluated. The SF-12 questionnaire was used to evaluate the criterion-related validity. The correlation between GSRS score and operative procedure, body mass index, serum albumin level or findings of gastrointestinal endoscopy were analyzed to evaluate the known-group validation. Result: Valid responses were collected from 325 patients who underwent upper gastrointestinal surgery. All GSRS subscale scores showed strong floor effects; the distribution was biased near the bottom. The correlation coefficients between these subscales and 3 component summary scores of SF-12 were just less than 0.30 except for correlation of abdominal pain and the mental component score (0.314). The abdominal pain score in the low BMI (<18 kg/m2) group was significantly high, however, no correlation were seen in between other subscale scores and other indicators, including operative procedure, serum albumin level or findings of gastrointestinal endoscopy. Conclusion: The use of GSRS for evaluation of postoperative patients was not validated in this study. GSRS score was not an appropriate outcome to evaluate postoperative disorder following upper gastrointestinal surgery.
