Development of a New Tool for Dyspnea Measurement in Chronic Respiratory Diseases

Dyspnea is a cardinal Respiratory symptom. According to the ATS dyspnea is the term used to characterize a subjective experience of breathing discomfort, covering qualitatively distinct sensations of varying intensity. The subjective nature of dyspnea and the high complexity of its determinants explain the often moderate correlations obtained with physiological data. Dyspnea must therefore be measured specifically. The aim of this study is the cross-sectional and longitudinal psychometric validation of a self-administered dyspnea questionnaire (assessing the impact of dyspnea on activities restriction), usable in clinical practice in order to assess dyspnea and its alterations in adult patients with chronic respiratory diseases. (COPD, diffuse interstitial lung diseases, Pulmonary arterial hypertension, Cystic fibrosis) Like any psychometric instrument, an efficient evaluation of dyspnea scale should ideally satisfy all the following required features: evaluative, discriminant, good reproducibility, and high sensitivity to change. The desired features apart from content validity are reproducibility and especially a high sensitivity to change, particularly following pulmonary rehabilitation. Thus, this questionnaire should precisely enable to assess the benefit of rehabilitation and it's sustainment in maintenance phase.