Evaluation of the Translation, Cross-cultural Adaptation and Properties of Measurement of the FACT-BMT Questionnaire

Various questionnaires have been described which evaluate the quality of life in patients undergoing cancer treatment, but most were originally developed in English and have not been adequately validated for other languages. To evaluate the process of translation and cross-cultural adaptation and the measurement properties of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Bone Marrow Transplantation (FACT-BMT) questionnaire, a systematic review was conducted with two independent evaluators. The search for articles was carried out in four databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and SCIELO, using the terms “questionnaire”, “quality of life”, “oncology”, and “valid” and their descriptors according to MeSH and DeCs. The searches yielded 6,877 studies, of which only three performed the stages of translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and evaluation of the measurement properties of the FACT-BMT questionnaire. The instruments in Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese showed and presented good methodological quality, but none of the four studies followed all the validation criteria for the questionnaire. The adapted versions of the FACT-BMT have methodological weaknesses in their process of translation and cross-cultural adaptation and evaluation of measurement properties, therefore the questionnaires possibly being used inadequately in other languages.