Introduction:

Assessing the quality of life of anticoagulated patients is important; there is currently no Spanish validation of the Duke Anticoagulation Satisfaction Scale (DASS).

Objective:

To conduct a linguistic validation and preliminary psychometric properties estimation in Colombian Spanish of the DASS for assessing quality of life in patients anticoagulated with vitamin K antagonists.

Materials and method:

A validation study of a qualitative scale conducted in a private university hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. This validation had three phases: translation and cultural adaption by a bilingual panel; pilot test including initial application, cognitive interview with patients (n: 5), and clinical review by experts (n:10) and internal consistency assessment of the scale (n: 100).

Results:

The study yielded a version of DASS in Colombian Spanish that was technically and conceptually equivalent to the English version. The domains of limitations in patient activity, discomfort produced by anticoagulation, and psychological impact had a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.9. According to expert opinion, most questions had the right relevance (Aiken V coefficient: 0.67-0.87).

Conclusion:

This is the first version of the DASS published in Spanish. The translation and cultural adaptation process resulted in a scale equivalent to its original version. The internal consistency analysis showed a highly consistent but not redundant scale.

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