JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Frequency and timing of the assessment of patients’ symptoms and discomfort during postoperative recovery is a goal. Therefore, real-time-recovery evaluation has been suggested in order to identify specific deficits in patients’ recovery.

Objective:

To psychometric evaluate the Swedish Web Version of the Quality of Recovery (SwQoR) Scale adapted for patients undergoing local and peripheral nerve block: SwQoR-LA.

Methods:

This was a secondary analysis of a psychometric evaluation of 107 patients aged ≥18 years undergoing day surgery under local or peripheral nerve block anaesthesia at four different day surgery departments in Sweden. The SwQoR-LA, inserted into a mobile application (app) called Recovery Assessment by Phone Points (RAPP), was completed daily on postoperative days 1–7.

Results:

Some evidence of construct validity was supported, and discriminant validity was found in seven of eight items related to general anaesthesia. The internal consistency was acceptable (0.87–0.89) and the split-half reliability was .80– .86. Cohen’s d effect size was 0.98 and the percentage of change from the baseline was 43.4%. No floor or ceiling effects were found.

Conclusions:

The SwQoR-LA is valid, reliable, responsive and clinically feasible for real-time-recovery digital assessment of patient recovery in order to identify specific deficits in patients’ recovery and detect those patients who might benefit from a timely intervention.