Abstract / Summary
Abstract Background Brain tumors and their treatments decrease the quality of life. The assessment of patient-reported outcomes, and more specifically health-related quality of life, is an important aspect of clinical care. EORTC QLQ BN20 and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Brain (FACT-BR) are the most used tools to assess QoL. In Albania, there is very little information available about the quality of life of cancer patients. The aim of this study was to describe the translation process and linguistic validation of the EORTC QLQ-BN20 questionnaire into Albanian. Patients and methods According to the EORTC standard guidelines, there was a backward and forward translation procedure to generate the Albanian language version of the QLQ-BN20. The linguistic validation process included a pilot study of ten patients. Face-to-face interviews were conducted to detect any difficulty encountered while completing the questionnaire. Results Four female and six male patients with an average age of 58.4 participated in the pilot study. There was no need for changes to be incorporated into the final Albanian BN–20 questionnaire. Discussion The pilot validation showed that the Albanian translation of the EORTC BN-20 nearly replicated its English counterpart. The final version of the Albanian BN-20 has received EORTC approval, and it is available on the EORTC website for academic or commercial use in clinical practice and studies for patients with primary brain tumours.