CROSS-CULTURAL VALIDATION OF THE DEFINITION OF MULTIMORBIDITY IN THE BULGARIAN LANGUAGE

Radost S. Assenova¹, Jean Yves Le Reste², Gergana H. Foreva¹, Daniela S. Mileva¹, Slawomir Czachowski³, Agnieszka Sowinska⁴, Patrice Nabbe², Stella Argyriadou⁵, Djurdjica Lazic⁶, Melida Hasaganic⁷, Heidrun Lingner⁸,
Harris Lygidakis⁹, Miguel-Angel Muñoz¹⁰, Ana Claveria¹¹, Chista Doerr¹², Harm Van Marwijk¹³, PaulVan Royen¹⁴, Claire Lietard^15
1Section of General Practice, Medical University - Plovdiv, Bulgaria, ²Department of General Practice, Université de Bretagne occidentale, Brest, France, ³Department of Family Doctor, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, ⁴Department of English, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, ⁵The Greek Association of General Practitioners (ELEGEIA), Thessaloniki, Greece, ⁶Department of Family Medicine, School of medicine, Univesity of Zagreb, Croatia, ⁷Association of Family Physicians from the FBIH, ⁸Allgemein Medizin Hochschule Hannover, Hannover, Germany, ⁹President of Vasco da Gama Movement, General Practitioner, Bologna Area, Italy, ¹⁰Institut Català de la Salut-IDIAP Jordi Gol, Barcelona, Spain, ¹¹Xerencia de atención primaria de Vigo, Vigo, Spain, ¹²Institut für Allgemeinmedizin UMG Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, ¹³Department of General Practice, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Nederland, ¹⁴Department of Primary and Interdisciplinary Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, ¹⁵Department of Public Health, Université de Bretagne occidentale, Brest, France

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Multimorbidity is a health issue with growing importance. During the last few decades the populations of most countries in the world have been ageing rapidly. Bulgaria is affected by the issue because of the high prevalence of ageing population in the country with multiple chronic conditions. The AIM of the present study was to validate the translated defi nition of multimorbidity from English into the Bulgarian language. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study is part of an international project involving 8 national groups. We performed a forward and backward translation of the original English defi nition of multimorbidity using a Delphi consensus procedure. RESULTS: The physicians involved accepted the defi nition with a high percentage of agreement in the first round. The backward translation was accepted by the scientifi c committee using the Nominal group technique. DISCUSSION: Some of the GPs provided comments on the linguistic expressions which arose in order to improve understanding in Bulgarian. The remarks were not relevant to the content. The conclusion of the discussion, using a meta-ethnographic approach, was that the differences were acceptable and no further changes were required. CONCLUSIONS: A native version of the published English multimorbidity defi nition has been finalized. This defi nition is a prerequisite for better management of multimorbidity by clinicians, researchers and policy makers.