Rhinoplasty Health Inventory and Nasal Outcomes (RHINO) Scale: Translation, Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation for Hebrew-Speaking Patients

Overview

The RHINO scale measures both function and appearance after rhinoplasty but existed only in English. The Israeli authors used the forward-and-back translation method of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, then tested the Hebrew version on native-speaking rhinoplasty patients and healthy controls.

Sections of note

• Internal consistency: Cronbach's alpha 0.800 (rhinoplasty group) and 0.896 (controls).
• Test-retest reproducibility: no significant difference (p = 0.5); Bland-Altman 95% limits of agreement 8.78 to 9.80.
• Validity: significant differences between rhinoplasty patients and controls (p < 0.001), pre- versus postoperative (p < 0.001), postoperative versus controls (p = 0.002), and between aesthetic and functional subscores before and after surgery (p < 0.001).
• No comprehension problems reported. Level of Evidence IV.

What it means for a patient

• Hebrew-speaking patients can now be assessed with a validated questionnaire before and after rhinoplasty.
• Such tools help set expectations and give a number to a subjective result.
• The paper is about the questionnaire, not about surgical outcomes.

Why this paper matters

Validated translations are needed for outcome research to be comparable across countries. Limits: single centre, group sizes not stated in the abstract.

Terms

• RHINO scale: Rhinoplasty Health Inventory and Nasal Outcomes, a patient-reported quality-of-life measure.
• Cronbach's alpha: a measure of how consistently items in a questionnaire measure the same thing; above 0.7 is acceptable.
• Test-retest reliability: agreement when the same person repeats the questionnaire.
• Bland-Altman plot: a graph showing agreement between two measurements.