Frontotemporal Dementia Rating Scale (FTD-FRS): Linguistic and Cultural Adaptation in Russia

Introduction. Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative disease and is the second most frequent cause of early-onset dementia (before 65 years). Quantitative assessment of disease severity can be an essential tool for predicting and objectively assessing the rate of disease progression, which is vital not only for clinical practice but also for research. There are no specialized Russian language scales for evaluating the severity of dementia in FTD, and the use of functional assessment scales developed for patients with Alzheimer disease for this purpose leads to erroneous diagnosis and reduces the quality of research. The aim of this work was to perform linguistic and cultural adaptation and validation of the Russian version of the Frontotemporal Dementia Rating Scale (FTD-FRS). Materials and methods: Forward and back translations of the scale and its materials, pilot testing, development of the Russian language version with the help of a linguist and neurologists specializing in working with patients with cognitive impairments were performed. Results. After completing the forward and back translations, the expert commission removed inaccuracies in the translation of the scale materials. Pilot testing was carried out on 10 patients with FTD. Researchers did not have any difficulties understanding and interpreting the instructions. After this stage, the final edition of the Russian version of the scale was adopted. The article contains the main text of the scale and a link to the full version of the scale with the main text and instructions. Conclusion. A Russian language version of the Frontotemporal Dementia Rating Scale has been published for the first time. The first stage of validation (linguistic and cultural adaptation) was performed in the Research Center of Neurology. There is ongoing work to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Russian language version.