Article
The sino nasal outcome test for neurosurgery (SNOT-NC): Modified version of disease specific questionnaire for transnasal skull base surgery
Search Medline for
Authors
Published: | June 9, 2017 |
---|
Outline
Text
Objective: The transnasal endoscopic approach to lesions of the skull base has been increasingly employed in recent years. Standardized questionnaires to assess the postoperative subjective nose-related discomfort are missing. Here, we present a modified version of the SNOT-22 questionnaire for the sino-nasal outcome test for neurosurgery (SNOT-NC).
Methods: The SNOT-NC is based on the german version modified from sino-nasal outcome test (SNOT-22) which is used for patients with rhino sinusitis. The SNOT-NC consists of 6 subscales containing 23 items covering different areas of oto-rhino-nasal symptoms, ocular discomforts and quality of life adapted to patients undergoing endoscopic operations for skull base lesions. The Short Form 36 health survey (SF-36) and a parallel version of nasal questionnaire were used for subscale correlations. The SNOT-NC was psychometrically verified using the data of 86 consecutive patients treated by the same surgeon.
Results: The internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) for the subscales ranged from 0.64 to 0.89 for the subscales, while it was 0.90 for the whole instrument. Also indicating a high internal consistency, the Guttman’s split half reliability coefficients was 0.84.for all items. Inter-item correlation with Friedman-test and T-quadrat test revealed a high significance (p<0.0001). Examination of validity revealed substantial associations between the SNOT-NC and SF-36 and also a wide range of related nasal symptoms (p<0.01).
Conclusion: With our data we could show that SNOT-NC appears to be a valid and, reliable method for assessing outcome parameters for patients undergoing transnasal skull base surgery. It may prove to be a valuable tool to asses the nasal-discomfort outcome of patients at follow up examinations. Further analyses including tests for retest reliability and sensitivity are needed for the future.