The development and clinical use of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ quality of life questionnaire (GAST) for adult cochlear implant patients

Abstract

Objectives

To Review the benefit of the GAST questionnaire (Tilston, S. 2003. Assessing the quality of life in adult cochlear implant users. MSc dissertation. London: City University.) to measure hearing related quality of life for adults pre and post-cochlear implantation. To develop a scoring methodology as to what score constitutes a significantly ‘good’ or ‘poor’ change to better target rehabilitation to those most in need.

Design

The GAST Questionnaire was developed using a robust cycle of validation and reliability analyses using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (Norusis, M. 1993. SPSS for windows: professional statistics. release 6.0. Chicago: SPSS Inc.). The scoring methodology was developed by dividing 83 patient full data sets into quintiles for the delta of quality of life improvement and the 9–12 month post-implantation GAST score.

Results

The GAST questionnaire design was deemed robust. The scoring methodology used led to the 20th percentile score highlighting individuals requiring further support and the 80th percentiles for those suitable for partial booking.

Conclusion

The GAST questionnaire is a useful way of identifying the patients in need of support as well as to measure patient reported quality of life improvements following cochlear implantation.

Keywords:

• Cochlear Implants
• Adults
• Quality of Life
• Questionnaire

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at doi:10.1080/14670100.2021.1961364.

Disclaimer statement

Contributors Thanks go to David Canning who was my MSc project Clinical Supervisor at City University, London.

Funding None.

Conflicts of interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval None

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Driver

Sandra Driver is the Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist.

Andrew Soulby

Andrew Soulby is an Audiological Scientist and Research Audiologist.

Natasha Shallita

Natasha Shallita, Specialist Speech and Language Therapists.

Hazel Walters

Hazel Walters, Specialist Speech and Language Therapists.

Isabelle Jones

Isabelle Jones, Specialist Speech and Language Therapists.

Dan Jiang

Professor Dan Jiang is an Otolaryngologist and Skull Based Surgeon and Clinical Director of the Hearing Implant Service.