A measure of quality of life after abdominal surgery

Introduction: A major limitation of clinical trials evaluating laparoscopic surgical procedures has been the lack of a valid and reliable measure of short-term quality of life after abdominal surgery.Methods: We used existing health status measures, focus groups, and semi-structured patient interviews to generate a prototype questionnaire of 51 items, which was administered to patients within 2 weeks after an abdominal surgical procedure. We …