A Study on the Development of a Korean Metabolic Syndrome Questionnaire Using Blood Stasis Clinical Data

Abstract EN

Objective.

The aims of this study were to extract clinical indicators related to metabolic diseases using the Blood Stasis Questionnaires I and II (BSQ-I and II) developed in 2013 and 2014, respectively, and to develop a BSQ on metabolic syndrome (BSQ-MS).

Methods.

A total of 2,158 patients, comprising 1,214 from 7 traditional Korean medical hospitals in 2013 and 944 from 3 traditional Korean medical hospitals in 2014, were asked to complete the BSQ-I and BSQ-II.

For the 370 patients who met the metabolic syndrome criteria, reliability and validity of the BSQ-MS were assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, while prediction accuracy was determined by logistic regression.

Results.

The BSQ-MS included a total of 15 clinical signs and symptoms.

It showed satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s α coefficient=0.70) and validity, with significant differences in mean scores between the blood stasis (14.09±6.14) and non-blood stasis (9.09±5.60) subject groups.

The cut-off value of BSQ-MS score was 9 points, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was approximately 77%, the sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic accuracy according to the cut-off value were 82.9% and 49.7%, respectively, and the sensitivity and specificity of the prediction accuracy by logistic regression were 72.2% and 71.6%, respectively.

Conclusion.

These results suggest that the BSQ-MS is an appropriate instrument for estimating blood stasis in patients with metabolic syndrome, although its sensitivity for diagnosis according to the cut-off value is low.