Cross-cultural adaptation and concurrent validity of the children's OMNI scale of perceived exertion for Arm-Crank activity in Spina Bifida.

Purpose: To perform a cross-cultural adaptation of the OMNI verbal descriptors to Brazilian-Portuguese and examine the validity of the Brazilian version for arm-crank activity.
Materials and Methods: Cross-cultural adaptation stages were: permission, translation, synthesis, back translation, expert committee review, pretesting, and submission and appraisal. For the concurrent validity, a Brazilian OMNI-Wheel scale was used to obtain rating of perceived exertion for the overall body (RPE _Overall ) and arms (RPE _Arms ) in participants ( n  = 9, 10-17 years) with spina bifida. Cardiopulmonary exercise test was used to measure heart rate (HR) and oxygen uptake (VO ₂ ). Repeated Measures Correlation ( r _rm ) was used to examine the scale validity.
Results: The cross-cultural adaptation produced equivalence between English and Brazilian-Portuguese verbal descriptors based on successful translation and pretesting. The Brazilian OMNI-wheel was validated based on strong associations of RPE _Overall with VO ₂ ( r _rm (35) = 0.86, 95% CI [0.93, 0.73], p  < 0.001) and HR ( r _rm (35) = 0.89, 95% CI [0.94, 0.79], p  < 0.001) and RPE _Arms with VO ₂ ( r _rm (33) = 0.82, 95% CI [0.91, 0.66], p  < 0.001) and HR ( r _rm (33) = 0.82, 95% CI [0.91, 0.66], p  < 0.001).
Conclusions: The OMNI scale was cross-culturally adapted to Brazilian-Portuguese. The Brazilian OMNI-Wheel was validated based on strong associations of RPE with HR and VO ₂ . Implications For RehabilitationThe original English OMNI was cross-culturally adapted to Brazilian-Portuguese.A Brazilian wheelchair OMNI was concurrently validated for Arm-Crank Activity in adolescents with spina bifida.This OMNI scale version may aid health providers in monitoring perceived exertion in Brazil.