RhinAsthma Patient Perspective: a short daily asthma and rhinitis QoL assessment

Background: The present study aimed to develop a short validated patient-completed questionnaire, the RhinAsthma Patient Perspective (RAPP), to assess the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with asthma and comorbid allergic rhinitis in clinical practice. Methods: A provisional RAPP questionnaire was formed from candidate items identified through retrospective analysis of 333 RHINASTHMA questionnaires. This was then tested on 150 asthma patients with allergic rhinitis. Results: Psychometric analyses identified eight items fitting a unidimensional model to form RAPP. Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient > 0.8) and agreement with RHINASTHMA (r = 0.31, P = 0.0001) were excellent. Criterion, discriminant, and convergent validity were good. Reliability in 47 stable patients was very good (intra-class and concordance correlation coefficients were 0.90 and 0.89, respectively). Responsiveness in 103 patients with health improvement or deterioration was significantly associated with changes in Global Rating Scale (r = 0.4965, P < 0.01), Rhinitis Visual Analogue Scale (r = 0.5722,P < 0.01) and asthma control test (r = 0.6483, P < 0.01). Minimal clinical difference in the analyzed population was 2. Conclusion: RhinAsthma Patient Perspective is a simple eight-question questionnaire with good measurement properties and sensitivity to health changes, which will provide a valid, reliable and standardized HRQoL measurement in patients with asthma and comorbid allergic rhinitis in clinical practice