S³-NIV Questionnaire Helps Assess Home Noninvasive Ventilation

The S³-NIV questionnaire has been shown to provide both clinicians and patients with a simple, reliable tool for evaluating 3 important domains related to home noninvasive ventilation (NIV) as a complement to physiologic monitoring of home NIV, according to the results of a study of stable patients treated at home with NIV.

Patients were recruited from 3 French-speaking regional and university hospitals. Findings from the analysis were published in the European Respiratory Journal.

Investigators sought to develop and validate the S³-NIV questionnaire — a short questionnaire designed to measure respiratory symptoms, sleep quality, and NIV-related side effects. A total of 338 patients were enrolled in the item reduction phase of the S³-NIV questionnaire. Patients were recruited from Geneva University Hospitals in Switzerland (n=153), Hôpital du Valais in Switzerland (n=95), and Grenoble University Hospital in France (n=90). The participants were all non-naive patients who had been established on home NIV for ≥4 months prior to study inclusion.

All of the 338 participants completed a 22-item questionnaire. Of the 22 items, 11 were removed because of redundancy (n=8), nonscalability (n=2), and lack of fit (n=1). The final version of the S³-NIV questionnaire contained 11 items that covered 2 dimensions: “respiratory symptoms” and “sleep and NIV-related side effects.”

Convergent validity was high between the “respiratory symptoms” subscale of the S³-NIV questionnaire and the St. George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (P <.001), as well as between the “sleep and NIV-related side effects” subscale and the Quebec Sleep Questionnaire (P <.001). After 4 weeks of use, the S³-NIV questionnaire demonstrated good test-retest reliability.

The investigators concluded that the S³-NIV questionnaire is a short, valid, repeatable, self-completed tool for the routine clinical evaluation of patients who are undergoing home NIV. Furthermore, the “content of the S³-NIV questionnaire can serve as a backbone during consultations to identify key areas that need to be further explored in a personalized interview in order to optimize care delivery in this patient population.”

Reference

Dupuis-Lozeron E, Gex G, Pasquina P, et al. Development and validation of a simple tool for the assessment of home NIV: the S³-NIV questionnaire [published online September 27, 2018]. Eur Respir J. doi:10.1183/13993003.011822018