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Objective: Oral mucositis is a frequent clinical condition that has been shown to affect pediatric cancer patients. Oral Mucositis Daily Questionnaire (OMDQ) is one of the few available patient-reported outcome measures to assess the extent and impact of oral mucositis. The objectives of the study were to translate the Mouth and Throat Soreness-Related Questions of the OMDQ into Chinese (OMDQ MTS-Ch) for children and adolescents aged 6–18 years receiving chemotherapy and to evaluate its psychometric properties. Methods: This was part of a multicenter, prospective cohort study involving two phases. Phase I involved forward-backward translation to fit the cognitive and linguistic age level of the children and adolescents, followed by face and content validation, together with pretesting. In Phase II, which evaluated the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and discriminant validity, a total of 140 patients completed the OMDQ MTS-Ch for 14 days. Results: The OMDQ MTS-Ch had satisfactory face and content validities. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the OMDQ MTS-Ch was 0.984. All of the corrected item-total correlations were higher than 0.90. The test-retest intraclass correlation coefficient between consecutive days for the OMDQ MTS-Ch items ranged from 0.576 to 0.983; the only value that was not over 0.70 was that for the paired study days 7 and 8 for the item of talking. The mean area-under-the-curve OMDQ MTS-Ch item scores were significantly different among patients with different degrees of mucositis severity (P < 0.001), supporting the discriminant validity. Conclusions: It has been shown that the OMDQ MTS-Ch has a good level of reliability and discriminant validity and can be completed by children aged ≥6 years and adolescents on a daily basis to measure mucositis and its related functional limitations.

Aims We tested the hypothesis that myocardial stiffness as assessed by diastolic wall strain (DWS) is altered in adult survivors of childhood leukaemias with preserved left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction and explored its association with myocardial fibrosis and diastolic deformation. Methods and results Ninety-four (53 males) adult survivors of childhood leukaemias aged 22.2 ± 5.5 years and 66 (36 males) healthy controls were studied retrospectively. Diastolic wall strain and calibrated integrated backscatter (cIB) were measured as indices of myocardial stiffness and fibrosis, respectively. Left and right ventricular (RV) diastolic and torsional mechanics were interrogated using speckle tracking echocardiography. Patients had significantly lower LV DWS, and hence stiffer LV myocardium, and greater myocardial cIB in patients than controls (all P < 0.001). Left ventricular longitudinal, radial, and circumferential early diastolic strain rates, circumferential late diastolic strain rate, and peak twisting and untwisting velocities, tricuspid annular early diastolic velocity, and RV-free wall longitudinal early diastolic strain rate were significantly lower in patients than controls (all P < 0.05). Diastolic wall strain correlated inversely with myocardial cIB, and positively with LV longitudinal, radial, and circumferential early diastolic strain rates (all P < 0.05), while myocardial cIB correlated inversely with LV radial and circumferential early diastolic strain rates, circumferential late diastolic strain rate, peak twisting and untwisting velocities, and tricuspid annular e velocity (all P < 0.05). Conclusion In adult survivors of childhood leukaemias, despite the preservation of LV ejection fraction, increased stiffness of the LV myocardium is evident and is associated with myocardial fibrosis and impaired ventricular diastolic function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]