Validation of the modified Arabic version of Activities Specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC) among Egyptian patients with vestibular disorders

Background: The ABC scale is a questionnaire to evaluate the risk of fall in people with imbalance. Objectives: Modify and validate the Arabic form of the ABC scale on the Egyptians with vestibular disorders. Methods: The Arabic version of the ABC scale has been revised and modified to replace the words that is ambiguous on the Egyptians. The revised version has been back translated and judged by expert committee to confirm its matching with the original English version.The final form is applied to the control group which is composed of 100 healthy Egyptians with age (18 - 45) years and a study group composed of 60 Egyptian patients having vestibular disorders (VD) that match the control group in age and sex. Results: The results gave excellent reliability with Cronbach’s alpha (0.94) among patients and (0.75) among controls and the corrected item-total correlation > 0.3 for all items. The repeatability was found high for control and VD group. The total scores for VD patients were significantly different from the controls. Conclusion: The modified Arabic ABC scale is reliable and valid subjective tool in the assessment and follow up of VD among Egyptians.