Brazilian Portuguese validated version of the Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire

• Published in: Arquivos brasileiros de cardiologia 2013-12, Vol.101 (6), p.554-561
• Main Authors: Sardinha, Aline, Nardi, Antonio Egidio, Araújo, Claudio Gil Soares de, Ferreira, Maria Cristina, Eifert, Georg H
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Agoraphobia - diagnosis; Anxiety Disorders - diagnosis; Anxiety Disorders - psychology; Brazil; Coronary Artery Disease - diagnosis; Coronary Artery Disease - psychology; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Educational Status; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Original; Psychometrics; Surveys and Questionnaires - standards; Test Anxiety Scale; Validation Studies as Topic
• ISSN: 0066-782X; 1678-4170
• DOI: 10.5935/abc.20130207

Cardiac Anxiety (CA) is the fear of cardiac sensations, characterized by recurrent anxiety symptoms, in patients with or without cardiovascular disease. The Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire (CAQ) is a tool to assess CA, already adapted but not validated to Portuguese. This paper presents the three phases of the validation studies of the Brazilian CAQ. To extract the factor structure and assess the reliability of the CAQ (phase 1), 98 patients with coronary artery disease were recruited. The aim of phase 2 was to explore the convergent and divergent validity. Fifty-six patients completed the CAQ, along with the Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ) and the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN). To determine the discriminative validity (phase 3), we compared the CAQ scores of two subgroups formed with patients from phase 1 (n = 98), according to the diagnoses of panic disorder and agoraphobia, obtained with the MINI - Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. A 2-factor solution was the most interpretable (46.4% of the variance). Subscales were named "Fear and Hypervigilance" (n=9; alpha = 0.88), and "Avoidance", (n = 5; alpha = 0.82). Significant correlation was found between factor 1 and the BSQ total score (p