Bariatric surgery offers rapid and massive weight loss, but can leave the body with a substantial amount of excess skin. Excess skin may have both physical and psychological consequences, including distortions of body image and skin problems, such as irritation. Body contouring performed for cosmetic purposes, or after weight loss, has the potential to improve one’s body image and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Many studies have shown the interest of measuring this improvement using generic instruments. Unfortunately, these tools were not specifically designed for body contouring surgery, thus highlighting the lack of dedicated PRO instruments for measuring outcomes after body contouring surgery.
To fill this gap, Klassen AF et al. (2016) (1) created a patientreported outcome (PRO) instrument specifically oriented towards weight loss and body contouring: the BODY-Q. This tool is designed to measure patient perceptions of weight loss and/ or body contouring.
This clinical research was aimed at translating the BODY-Q into French and culturally adapting it, so that it can be used in the French speaking population for measuring the impact of body contouring surgery on patient quality of life.
In order to be used in international publications, a PRO instrument needs to undergo a strict process of cross-cultural adaptation and validation of its psychometric properties. Adapting a questionnaire in another language and culture requires high-quality translation and linguistic validation. Following this complex and strict process allowed us to produce a French version of the BODY-Q that takes into account the specific socio-cultural features and linguistic equivalences.
For the translation process, we followed the recommendations established by the International Society For Pharmacoeconomics and Outcome Research (ISPOR) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Our aim was to ensure a conceptually and culturally valid translation.