A NEW QUALITY-OF-LIFE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR H EAD AND NECK CANCERS

The assessment of quality of life is an element that is now taken into account in the evaluation of therapies in oncology and especially for treatments connected with important sequellae. The lack of a specific tool measuring the quality of life of patients with head and neck can cers (H&N), validated in French, leads us to develop and to validate a selfquestionnaire. The construction of this questionnaire has been re alised following a strict procedure (identification of aspects to expl ore, formulation and selection of items) conducting to a specific modu le of 17 questions with 4 modes of reply. The validation of the questi onnaire has been undertaken on 116 patients that filled the specific m odule HEN and the general selfquestionnaire QLQ-C30 of the EORTC. The acceptability is excellent since only 4 % of the patients have refused to participate to this study and that the number of missing data is v ery low. The value of the Cronbach alpha coefficient whith the global score equal to 0.85, reflects a good reliability of the questionnaire. Global score correlation of the module H&N with the different scales (functional and symptoms) of the QLQ-C30 are coherent. Global scores a re correlated to the nature of the treatment (p < 0.001), to the evolu tion of the disease (p=0.01), to the tumour site (p=0.015) but not to the code WHO neither to the performance of a laryngectomy. The whole r esults indicate that we have a specific tool, reliable, and validated. Associated to a general quality of life questionnaire, this specific tool will be useful to complete the evaluation of therapies, especiall y during of comparative clinical trials.