Development, validity and responsiveness of the Clinical COPD Questionnaire.

The new Global Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guidelines advice to focus treatment in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) on improvement of functional state, prevention of disease progression and minimization of symptoms. So far no validated questionnaires are available to measure symptom and functional state in daily clinical practice. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Clinical COPD Questionnaire (CCQ).

Qualitative research with patients and clinicians was performed to generate possible items to evaluate clinical COPD control. Thereafter, an item reduction questionnaire was sent to 77 international experts. Sixty-seven experts responded and the 10 most important items, divided into 3 domains (symptoms, functional and mental state) were included in the CCQ (scale: 0 = best, 6 = worst).