B. Bauer et al., Quality of life and psychosocial impairment of patients with chronic primary headache - a review of instruments and preliminary results, NERVENHEILK, 19(7), 2000, pp. 388-394
The quality of life is of increasing importance in the evaluation of therap
y. To date, a plenty of different instruments to examine quality of life ha
s been developed which describe the quality of life or the psychosocial imp
airment of patients in different ways and with different methods. For chron
ic headache, it has to be decided whether unspecific, pain-specific or head
ache-specific instruments should be applied to measure quality of life. The
most common German instruments for the measurement of quality of life are
introduced and compared. Preliminary results obtained by the Headache Disab
ility Inventory (HDI) show that it is useful to develop headache-specific i
nstruments. Finally, the impact of the comorbidity of headache and psychiat
ric diseases such as depression on the quality of life is discussed.