Reliability and practical aspects of the disease impact measure on hypertensive patients.

OBJECTIVE to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, the ceiling and floor effects and the reliability of the Instrument to Measure the Impact of Coronary Disease on Patient's Daily Life (IDCV) when applied to hypertensive patients. METHOD one hundred and thirty seven hypertensive outpatients were interviewed, using questionnaires to collect sociodemographic and clinical data, followed by the IDCV. Reliability was assessed according to the temporal stability and internal consistency criteria. RESULTS the IDCV was applied in 8.0 (±3.0) minutes with 100% of the items answered. A ceiling effect of 31.4% was observed in the domain Adjustment to the Disease. The stability measure was observed for the total score and for all domains. There was evidence of internal consistency of the total IDCV (α=0.83) and the domains Physical Impact of the Disease – Symptoms (α=0.78) and Social and Emotional Impact of the Disease (α=0.74). CONCLUSION the IDCV is an instrument of easy use and its reliability among hypertensive patients is evidenced. The domain Adjustment to the Disease, however, should be reviewed in further studies.