Abstract: Objective This study was designed to evaluate of reliability and validity of self-rating anxiety scale（SAS） and self-rating depression scale（SDS） in patients with liver cirrhosis. Methods A total of 138 patients with liver cirrhosis were enrolled in this study. The reliability and validity of the two scales was evaluated by Cronbach’s α co-efficient,intraclass correlation co-efficient （ICC）,Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin （KMO） score and Bartlett’s test of sphericity（BTS）. Results The prevalence of anxiety and depression in this series were 38.2% and 63.1%,respectively;SAS scale’ Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.777 and SDS scale’ was 0.782, indicating better homogeneity reliability; Twenty items of SAS and SDS scales were analyzed by exploratory factors to construct validity and four main factors were extracted from the SAS scale that showed the variances ratio were 15.4%,14.9%,10.6% and 10.2%,respectively,and four factors accounted for 51.1% of the total variance of accumulated explanation;Five main factors were extracted from SDS scales that showed the variance ratio were 14.0%,12.6%,11.9%,10.3% and 8.4%,respectively,with 57.4% of the total variance;The re-measurement analysis of SAS and SDS scale’s items found that the two measurements were highly correlated with each other （P<0.001）. Conclusion SAS and SDS scales have a better reliability and validity in the investigation of psychological and mental impairment in patients with liver cirrhosis.

Key words: Liver cirrhosis, Anxiety, Depression, Reliability, Validity