To assess the validity and clinical utility of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) to measure illness perceptions in multiple forms of vasculitis.
Methods Patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA), Takayasu arteritis (TA), antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody–associated vasculitis (AAV), and relapsing polychondritis (RP) were recruited into a prospective, observational cohort. Patients independently completed the BIPQ, Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI), Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short Form survey (SF-36), and a patient global assessment (PtGA) at successive study visits. Physicians concurrently completed a physician global assessment (PGA) form. Illness perceptions, as assessed by the BIPQ, were compared to responses from the full-length Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) and to other clinical outcome measures.
Results There were 196 patients (GCA = 47, TA = 47, RP = 56, AAV = 46) evaluated over 454 visits. Illness perception scores in each domain were comparable between the BIPQ and IPQ-R (3.28 vs 3.47, P = 0.22). Illness perceptions differed by type of vasculitis, with the highest perceived psychological burden of disease in RP. The BIPQ was significantly associated with all other patient-reported outcome measures (rho = |0.50–0.70|, P < 0.0001), but did not correlate with PGA (rho = 0.13, P = 0.13).
Reference link- https://www.jrheum.org/content/47/12/1785
