Category: Rating Scales
Objective: Objective: To develop and validate the Gastrointestinal Dysfunction Scale – Parkinson’s Disease (GIDS-PD), a self-report scale designed to assess presence and severity of Gastrointestinal dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Background: Gastrointestinal dysfunction (GID) is a common feature of PD with important implications for the patient’s quality of life. GID has been recognized not only as a prodromal feature of PD, but also associated with accelerated disease progression. Nevertheless, different assessment tools and underlying differences in diagnostic criteria challenge the assessment of GID in PD. To date there is no psychometric instrument for quantitative evaluation of gastrointestinal symptoms specifically designed for use in PD that reflects ROME-IV and ICD-10 criteria.
Method: Following comprehensive literature review and three focus groups, we developed the GIDS-PD. 316 patients with PD and 55 controls completed the scale. To assess validity, patients also completed the Non Motor Symptom Scale, a stool diary adapted from the Bristol Stool Chart and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. To assess temporal reliability, a subset of 27 patients completed the GIDS-PD at two different time points with an interval of approximately four weeks (test-retest).
Results: The GIDS-PD consists of 12 items and 3 subscores: Constipation, Bowel Irritability and Upper GI. It demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .82), temporal reliability (0.79<ICCs>0.94) and convergent and divergent validity. A cut-off score of ≥3 on the GIDS-PD Constipation subscale discriminates between PD patients with and without constipation.
Conclusion: GIDS-PD is a novel self-report tool to assess the presence and severity of GID in people with PD, with strong reliability and validity.
References: The development and validation work of the GIDS-PD was recently submitted to Movement Disorders journal.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
M. Camacho, J. Greenland, C. Williams-Gray. The Gastrointestinal Dysfunction Scale – Parkinson’s Disease (GIDS-PD): a new tool to assess gastrointestinal dysfunction in Parkinson’s Disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2021; 36 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-gastrointestinal-dysfunction-scale-parkinsons-disease-gids-pd-a-new-tool-to-assess-gastrointestinal-dysfunction-in-parkinsons-disease/. Accessed June 15, 2025.« Back to MDS Virtual Congress 2021
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-gastrointestinal-dysfunction-scale-parkinsons-disease-gids-pd-a-new-tool-to-assess-gastrointestinal-dysfunction-in-parkinsons-disease/