Chest
The Quality of Well-being in Cystic Fibrosis
Section snippets
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The subjects were 25 male and 19 female patients with CF under care in the Pittsburgh Cystic Fibrosis Center. Their ages ranged from 7 to 36 years (mean = 16.5; SD = 6.9 years). Cystic fibrosis was diagnosed by elevated sweat chloride concentration (>60 mEq/L) and typical pulmonary or digestive symptoms or family history of CF.
Pulmonary function was measured using standard spirometry, adhering to the Snowbird Conference guidelines.13 We focused on readily obtainable measures that are
RESULTS
Resting pulmonary (unction test results and peak oxygen consumption during exercise are shown in Table 2. There was a significant correlation between QWB and each of the expiratory flow rates (Table 3; Fig 1). The correlation between QWB and FEV1 (r = 0.5518) was stronger than the correlation between QWB and FEF25-75% (r = 0.4793) and the correlation between QWB and PEFR (r = 0.4018). There was also a significant correlation between QWB and peak oxygen consumption (r = 0.5778), as seen in Table
DISCUSSION
This study provides evidence for the validity of the QWB scale as an outcome measure of patients with CF. The QWB is significantly related to more traditional outcome measures, namely, pulmonary function and exercise tolerance, yet the correlation is not perfect (r = 1.0). Although PFTs and exercise testing provide objective physiologic measures of disease severity and progression, neither is sensitive to other problems associated with the disease or its treatment. For instance, a hypothetical
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Supported in part by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and NIH grants S07 RR0550724 and MOI RR00084
Manuscript received February 11; revision accepted June 21.