Health-related quality of life in HIV infection

Abstract

The need for the quantitative assessment of health-related quality of life is increasingly being recognized in many different areas of health care, particularly in the evaluation of new treatments. This paper addresses the relevance of quality of life evaluation to HIV disease. The first part of the paper discusses the different ways in which quality of life has been defined and considers a number of methodological problems and different theoretical approaches to its measurement. The second part of the paper reviews the existing work on the quantitative evaluation of quality of life in HIV disease, including both descriptive studies and treatment evaluation studies. It is argued that the evaluation of health-related quality of life is important in HIV infection and should become an integral part of future treatment evaluation studies in order to help both clinicians and patients in their decisions concerning available treatment options.