an outcome measure of functionality and quality of life in patients with cervical myelopathy

background: cervical spondylotic myelopathy (csm) is a common cause of significant clinical morbidity. the japanese orthopedic association cervical myelopathy evaluation questionnaire (joacmeq) is a measure of health-related quality of life in these patients. objectives: this study aimed to cross-culturally translate and validate the joacmeq in iran. patients and methods: this study was a prospective clinical validation one. forward-backward procedure was applied to translate the questionnaire from english into persian. the translation and cross-cultural adaptation were performed in accordance with the published guidelines. a sample of patients with csm was asked to respond to the questionnaire at two times: providing preoperative and postoperative assessments (6 months follow-up). to test the reliability, the internal consistency was assessed by cronbach α coefficient and the validity was assessed by convergent validity. responsiveness to change was also assessed comparing patients’ preoperative and postoperative scores. results: all 87 patients completed the questionnaire. the cronbach α coefficient for the joacmeq at preoperative and postoperative assessments ranged from 0.71 to 0.82 indicating a good internal consistency for the questionnaire. in addition, the correlation of each item with its hypothesized subscale of the joacmeq showed satisfactory results suggesting that the items had a substantial association with their own subscales. further analysis also indicated that the questionnaire was responsive to change (p < 0.001). conclusions: in general, the findings suggest that the persian version of the joacmeq is a reliable and valid measure of functionality and quality of life evaluation among iranian patients suffered from csm.