Validation of the Croatian and Lebanese Revised Illness Perception Questionnaires for Healthy People (IPQ-RH)

The absence of Croatian- and Arabic-language measures to assess illness representations has contributed to lack of research among Croatian and Lebanese populations. Utilising the robust confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) approach, this study aimed to validate Croatian and Arabic versions of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire for Healthy People (IPQ-RH) in the breast and cervical cancer contexts, and compared these illness perceptions among Croatian and Lebanese women living in Australia. Forward and back-translated versions of the IPQ-RH were administered in Croatian to Croatian-born (n = 238), and Arabic to Lebanese-born (n = 240) women. The IPQ-RH illness perceptions were assessed for each cancer type, and the Negative Affect (NA) subscale of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) assessed discriminant validity. The CFA method demonstrated acceptable models across the Croatian and Lebanese IPQ-RH measures. The internal reliabilities for the IPQ-RH subscales were adequate and the subscales had low correlations with the NA subscale of the PANAS, indicating that the IPQ-RH measures are largely distinguishable from negative affective dispositions. These findings demonstrate that the Croatian and Lebanese IPQ-RH breast and cervical cancer measures have a factor structure similar to the originally developed IPQ-RH scale and provide further support for the theoretically developed illness representations.

[Hodgkin's lymphoma of the lungs]

A case of the patient with Hodgkin's lung lymphoma, who ten years ago was treated because of having Hodgkin's lymphoma of the mediastinum and neck, is reported in this paper. This time, the patient has been admitted to the hospital due to the pulmonary infiltration in the left upper lobe. As the etiology of the pulmonary infiltration could not be established by a routine diagnostic procedure (sputum cytology, catheter bronchial aspirate smears, bronchial brushing, excision of the bronchial mucosa, transtracheal and transbronchial aspiration), the transthoracic fine needle aspiration was performed to confirm the diagnosis. Cytologically, beside erythrocytes, the cells of the bronchial epithelium, eosinophilic granulocytes and lymphocytes, the cells of the Reed-Sternberg cell type were found in the transthoracic aspirate smears too.