Novel Multidisciplinary Salivary Gland Society (MSGS) Questionnaire: An International Consensus.

OBJECTIVES: First, establishment and validation of a novel questionnaire documenting the burden of xerostomia and sialadenitis symptoms, including quality of life. Second, to compare two versions regarding the answering scale (proposed developed answers Q3 vs. 0-10 visual analogue scale Q10) of our newly developed questionnaire, in order to evaluate their comprehension by patients and their reproducibility in time. STUDY DESIGN: The study is a systematic review regarding the evaluation of the existing questionnaire and a cohort study regarding the validation of our new MSGS questionnaire. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A Multidisciplinary Salivary Gland Society (MSGS) questionnaire consisting of 20 questions and two scoring systems was developed to quantify symptoms of dry mouth and sialadenitis. Validation of the questionnaire was carried out on 199 patients with salivary pathologies (digestive, nasal, or age-related xerostomia, post radiation therapy, post radioiodine therapy, Sjögren's syndrome, IgG4 disease, recurrent juvenile parotitis, stones, and strictures) and a control group of 66 healthy volunteers. The coherence of the questionnaire's items, its reliability to distinguish patients from healthy volunteers, its comparison with unstimulated sialometry, and the time to fill both versions were assessed. RESULTS: The novel MSGS questionnaire showed good internal coherence of the items, indicating its pertinence: the scale reliability coefficients amounted to a Cronbach's alpha of 0.92 for Q10 and 0.90 for Q3. The time to complete Q3 and Q10 amounted, respectively, to 5.23 min (±2.3 min) and 5.65 min (±2.64 min) for patients and to 3.94 min (±3.94 min) and 3.75 min (±2.11 min) for healthy volunteers. The difference between Q3 and Q10 was not significant. CONCLUSION: We present a novel self-administered questionnaire quantifying xerostomia and non-tumoral salivary gland pathologies. We recommend the use of the Q10 version, as its scale type is well known in the literature and it translation for international use will be more accurate. Laryngoscope, 132:322-331, 2022.

The RAI-6 Questionnaire: A New Screening Questionnaire to Monitor Complications of Radioiodine Treatment.

Objective: The aim of this study is to develop a simple and efficient screening questionnaire to be able to routinely monitor potential radioiodine therapy-induced complications. Materials and Methods: A new radioiodine 6 (RAI-6) questionnaire containing six questions adressing salivary, ocular, and nasal symptoms as well as quality of life was developed. Validation of the RAI-6 questionnaire was assessed with a group of fifty-four patients diagnosed with differentiated thyroid carcinoma treated post-operatively with radioiodine therapy, and in a group of fifty healthy volunteers. The patient's group was subdivided into subgroups according to the radioiodine dose received: 23 patients received less or 30 mCi, 28 patients received 100 mCi, and three patients received between 200 and 300 mCi. We asked the patients to complete the RAI-6 questionnaire in a retrospective manner, regarding their situation before radioiodine therapy and regarding their actual symptoms after radioiodine therapy. The time needed to complete the RAI-6 was also assessed both in patients and in healthy volunteers. Results: The mean post radioiodine treatment RAI-6 score were significantly higher than the mean pre radioiodine RAI-6 scores (p < 0.001) and the scores of healthy participants (p < 0.001). The mean total RAI-6 scores increased significantly with increasing radioiodine dose. A total mean RAI-6 score of each question was also analysed and revealed that ocular and nasal discomfort as well as quality of life were the items which affected the patients most after radioiodine treatment. The mean time to fill the RAI-6 questionnaire was 2 min for patients and 49 s for healthy volunteers. Conclusion: The RAI-6 represents a new questionnaire which is easy and quick to complete. This simple screening tool can be recommended for general clinical practise and further epidemiological research.