Translation and transcultural adaptation of Pain Quality Assessment Scale (PQAS) to brazilian version

INTRODUCTION: Most cancer patients are treated with chemotherapy, and peripheral neuropathy is a serious and common clinical problem affecting patients undergoing cancer treatment. However, the symptoms are subjective and underdiagnosed by health professionals. Thus, it becomes necessary to develop self-report instruments to overcome this limitation and improve the patient's perception about his medical condition or treatment. OBJECTIVE: Translate and culturally adapt the Brazilian version of the Pain Quality Assessment Scale, constituting a useful tool for assessing the quality of neuropathic pain in cancer patients. METHOD: The procedure followed the steps of translation, back translation, analysis of Portuguese and English versions by a committee of judges, and pretest. Pretest was conducted with 30 cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy following internationally recommended standards, and the final versions were compared and evaluated by a committee of researchers from Brazil and MAPI Research Trust, the scale's creators. RESULTS: Versions one and two showed 100% semantic equivalence with the original version. Back-translation showed difference between the linguistic translation and the original version. After evaluation by the committee of judges, a flaw was found in the empirical equivalence and idiomatic equivalence. In pretest, two people did not understand the item 12 of the scale, without interfering in the final elaboration. CONCLUSION: The translated and culturally adapted instrument is now presented in this publication, and currently it is in the process of clinical validation in Brazil