Springerplus. 2014 Nov 8;3:664. doi: 10.1186/2193-1801-3-664. eCollection 2014.

Illness perception in tuberculosis by implementation of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire - a TBNET study.

Pesut DP¹, Bursuc BN², Bulajic MV³, Solovic I⁴, Kruczak K⁵, Duarte R⁶, Sorete-Arbore A⁷, Raileanu M⁸, Strambu I⁸, Nagorni-Obradovic L⁹, Adzic T⁹, Lazic Z¹⁰, Zlatev-Ionescu M¹¹, Bhagyabati S¹², Singh II¹², Srivastava GN¹³.

Author information

1: Internal Medicine Department, University of Belgrade School of Medicine, Dr Subotica 8, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia ; Clinical Centre of Serbia, Teaching Hospital of Lung Diseases, Koste Todorovica 26, Belgrade, Serbia.
2: Department of Psychotherapy, Mind Institute, Bucharest, Romania.
3: Faculty of Organizational Sciences Lab of Statistics, University of Belgrade, Jove Ilica 153, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.
4: Catholic University, Ruzomberk, Slovakia ; National Institute for TB, Lung Diseases and Thoracic Surgery, Vysne Hagy, Kragujevac, Slovakia.
5: Jagiellonian University School of Medicine, Kracow, Poland.
6: University of Porto School of Medicine; Chest Disease Centre, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal.
7: Hospital of Lung Diseases and TB, Iasi, Romania.
8: Institute of Pneumology "Marius Nasta", Bucharest, Romania.
9: Internal Medicine Department, University of Belgrade School of Medicine, Dr Subotica 8, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.
10: Department of Lung Diseases, University Centre Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
11: Clinical Hospital of Infectious Diseases "Dr. V. Babes", Pulmonary Diseases, Bucharest, Romania.
12: Regional Research Medical Centre, Manipur, India.
13: Baranas Hindu University, Varanasi, India.

Abstract

How patients relate to the experience of their illness has a direct impact over their behavior. We aimed to assess illness perception in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) by means of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) in correlation with patients' demographic features and clinical TB score. Our observational questionnaire based study included series of consecutive TB patients enrolled in several countries from October 2008 to January 2011 with 167 valid questionnaires analyzed. Each BIPQ item assessed one dimension of illness perceptions like the consequences, timeline, personal control, treatment control, identity, coherence, emotional representation and concern. An open question referred to the main causes of TB in each patient's opinion. The over-all BIPQ score (36.25 ± 11.054) was in concordance with the clinical TB score (p ≤ 0.001). TB patients believed in the treatment (the highest item-related score for treatment control) but were unsure about the illness identity. Illness understanding and the clinical TB score were negatively correlated (p < 0.01). Only 25% of the participants stated bacteria or TB contact as the first ranked cause of the illness. For routine clinical practice implementation of the BIPQ is convenient for obtaining fast and easy assessment of illness perception with potential utility in intervention design. This time saving effective personalized approach may improve communication with TB patients and contribute to better behavioral strategies in disease control.