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Introduction: Electronic questionnaires offer invaluable advantages over paper-based ones. The aims of this study were to make available to Italian clinicians a culturally adapted version of the multidimensional electronic Personal Assessment Questionnaire-Pelvic Floor and to test face validity and factorial analysis for the Urinary section., Methods: The original English-language version of electronic Personal Assessment Questionnaire-Pelvic Floor was cross-culturally adapted to the Italian language. At the Urogynaecology Unit of Buzzi Hospital in Milan, the Urinary section of the Italian version was completed by women symptomatic for pelvic floor dysfunction. Time to questionnaire completion was recorded, and a nine-item paper questionnaire about the questionnaire was completed. Descriptive analysis to define patient population characteristics and nine-item paper questionnaire analysis were performed. Factorial analyses on the Urinary section of the questionnaire and on the nine-item paper questionnaire were performed, and internal reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha., Results: A culturally adapted Italian version of electronic Personal Assessment Questionnaire-Pelvic Floor was provided. In total, 95 women complaining of pelvic floor dysfunction took part in the study. Mean time to electronic questionnaire completion was 9 min (range: 5-17), with 95% of patients completing within 15 min. More than 95% of women considered the Italian version of electronic Personal Assessment Questionnaire-Pelvic Floor helpful, relevant, easy to use and comprehensive and would be happy to use it again. The questionnaire being overly long was an issue for 17% of women. The internal consistency of items in the nine-item paper questionnaire was confirmed with Cronbach's alpha scores > 0.8 for both the 'Value' and 'Burden' domains., Discussion: Our Italian cultural adaptation of electronic Personal Assessment Questionnaire-Pelvic Floor was well accepted by an appropriate target population. A full psychometric validation is now warranted.

Background: Preconception care involves health promotion to reduce risk factors that might affect women and couples of childbearing age. The risk factors of adverse reproductive outcomes include recognized genetic diseases in the family or the individual, previous congenital diseases, miscarriage, prematurity, fetal growth restriction, infertility, chronic maternal diseases, lifestyle, and occupational or environmental factors. Effective preconception care involves a range of preventive, therapeutic and behavioural interventions. Although in Italy there are national preconception care recommendations concerning the general population, they are usually encouraged informally and only for single risk factors. At present there is increasing interest in offering a global intervention in this field. The aim of this study was to investigate attitudes and behaviours of Italian women of childbearing age and healthcare professionals regarding preconception health., Methods: We conducted a qualitative study among women of childbearing age and healthcare professionals between February 2014 and February 2015. Five focus groups were held: 2 with non-pregnant women aged 22 to 44 years and 3 with healthcare professionals. Discussion topics included women's questions about preconception health, worries and barriers regarding preconception care interventions, attitudes and behaviours of women and healthcare professionals towards preconception health, women's information sources. In the analysis of the focus groups priority was given to what was said by the women, supplemented by information from the healthcare professionals' focus groups., Results: Fourteen women of childbearing age (8 nulliparae and 6 multiparae) and 12 healthcare professionals (3 nurses, 4 midwives, 5 doctors) participated in the focus groups. The results indicate the presence of many barriers and a lack of awareness of preconception health relating to women, healthcare professionals and policies. Women's knowledge and attitudes towards primary preconception care information are described. The main reference source of information in this field for Italian women seems to be their obstetric-gynaecologist., Conclusions: The study indicates that several barriers influence preconception care in Italy. Moreover, a lack of awareness of preconception health and care among Italian women of childbearing age and healthcare professionals emerges. The findings might contribute to strategies for the implementation of preconception care guidelines.

Background: The Asthma Life Impact Scale (ALIS) is a disease-specific measure used to assess the quality-of-life of people with asthma. It was developed in the UK and US and has proven to be acceptable to patients, to have good psychometric properties, and to be unidimensional., Objective: This paper reports on the adaptation and validation of the ALIS for use in representative Southern European (Italian) and Eastern European (Russian) languages., Methods: The ALIS was translated for both cultures using the dual-panel process. The newly translated versions were then tested with asthma patients to ensure face and content validity. Psychometric properties of the new language versions were assessed via a test?re-test postal survey conducted in both countries., Limitations: It is possible that some cultural or language differences still exist between the different language versions. Further research should be undertaken to determine responsiveness. Further studies designed to determine the clinical validity of the Italian ALIS would be valuable., Results: Linguistic nuances were easily resolved during the translation process for both language adaptations. Cognitive debriefing interviews (Russia n=9, male=11.1%, age mean (SD)=55.4 (13.2); Italy n=15, male=66.7%, age mean (SD)=63.5 (11.2)) indicated that the ALIS was easy to read and acceptable to patients. Psychometric testing was conducted on the data (Russia n=61, age mean (SD)=40.7 (15.4); Italy n=71, male=42.6%, age mean (SD)=49.5 (14.1)). The results showed that the new versions of the ALIS were consistent (Russian and Italian Cronbach's alpha=0.92) and reproducible (Russian test-re-test=0.86; Italian test-re-test=0.94). The Italian adaptation showed the expected correlations with the NHP and the Russian adaptation showed strong correlations with the CASIS and CAFS and weak-to-moderate correlations with %FEV1 and %PEF. In both adaptations the ALIS was able to distinguish between participants based on self-reported general health, self-reported severity, and whether or not they were hospitalized in the previous week.

Background/aims: Liver biopsy represents the gold standard to establish a diagnosis in all liver patients, but its current position in chronic viral hepatitis is questioned. We aimed to create a consensus on best practice of use of liver biopsy in the management of chronic HCV infection., Methods: We applied the Delphi method to 12 clinical scenarios of chronic HCV infection, to assess the extent of agreement (consensus measurement) and to resolve disagreement (consensus development) on the appropriateness of liver biopsy., Results: Among 108 chosen hepatologists, 61 (56.5%) accepted to participate to the first-round survey. In four patients the majority of experts (from 61.4 to 86.2%) agreed not to perform liver biopsy; in two cases an equivalent opinion was found, and in the remaining six scenarios the majority of experts would have recommended a biopsy. No expert recommended liver biopsy in all cases, while most agreed for an histological evaluation of 4 to 8 cases. At the second round, 36 experts (59%) submitted ballots. Fifty-four out of 431 (12.6%) original judgments were changed with equal distribution among different scenarios., Conclusions: Our survey showed a great divergence of management of similar patients and should provide a stimulus for an evidence-based evaluation of liver histology in chronic HCV infection.