Quality of life instruments in oncology

The objective of this article is to aid clinicians in understanding the cur rent state of the development and application of quality of life (QOL) inst ruments as outcome measures in cancer clinical research and practice. As a result of the achievements of the past two decades, the concept of QOL has been defined and many reliable and valid measurement tools have been develo ped. The two main approaches to QOL assessment, psychometric-based and util ity-based, are discussed together with a brief description of the strategie s for meaningful interpretation of QOL profiles. QOL measures in oncology h ave the potential to be used to study populations in randomised clinical tr ials, to aid patient-clinician interactions in routine practice and to supp ort policy decision making and economic evaluation of healthcare provision. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.