EVALUATION OF QUALITY-OF-LIFE FOR DIVERSE PATIENT POPULATIONS

Quality of life is used increasingly as a primary and secondary endpoi nt of clinical investigations of new therapies. Quality of life inform ation may be especially useful for the assessment of cancer treatments , where increases in survival may be accompanied by detrimental side e ffects. The recognition of the importance of quality of life has led t o the recent proliferation of cancer specific quality of life instrume nts. As more is understood about the heterogeneity of patient populati ons, however, we must assess how culturally defined factors may impact patient quality of life and its assessment. Quality of life instrumen ts are diverse, ranging from those focusing on objective measures of f unctionality to those assessing subjective measures of patient prefere nces for their current health state. These instruments have been devel oped for use in the general population and for disease-specific popula tions. Assessment of the appropriateness of potential quality of life instruments in specific clinical settings, in addition to understandin g the cultural diversity of the clinical population being studied, wil l guide the researcher in the choice of an appropriate quality of life instrument for cancer clinical trials.