Italian Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of a Back Pain Screening Questionnaire (Start Back Screening Tool)

Abstract

Background: Low back pain is a heterogeneous condition, from which most patients recover after a few months. However, a considerable proportion of patients develop chronic pain despite different types of treatment. Primary care evidence-based guidelines for non-specific back pain highlight the importance of identifying indicators of poor prognosis in order for treatment to be appropriately targeted. The Start Back Screening Tool Questionnaire (SBST) is a prognostic tool developed and validated to identify subgroups of patients and guide the decision-making process for the initial primary care of the acute back pain.

Aims: The aim of this project is the translation and the cross-cultural adaptation of an Italian SBST version. The development of a reliable and validated questionnaire would be useful for different health professionals in the management of low back pain.

Methods: The translation and validation of this tool was divided in different steps, following the guidance of questionnaire translation: contact with the SBST developers, translation from English to Italian, synthesis, retranslation from Italian to English, expert committee review, test of the pre-final version on 30 individuals with LBP, and the final version being approved by the original Author.

Results: For the linguistic translation it was necessary to make some semantic variations. The interviewed participants reported a good general understanding of the questions. However, 6 subjects (14%) wondered if two questions were related to back pain or general health. After discussion within the expert committee and with the SBST developer, the wording was modified to add a reference to back pain in these two questions. The Italian version of STST is now ready for validation.

Keywords: Cultural; Linguistic; Low Back Pain; Questionnaire; STarT Back Screening Tool; Translation.