Quality of life assessment in medicine

Abstract

The tecnnology of contemporary research into the quality of life has been developing rapidly for more that 10 years. There is now clear consensus on the major purposes and basic tools of clinical research, and the centrality of the patient's point in care outcomes is recognized. Especially in incurable conditions, when the self-evident and realistic goal of care is to provide a life that is as comfortable, functional, and satisfying as possible, the outcome management primarily concerns quality of life. This broad concept can be made concrete by measurements of health-related components including ADL, role functioning, physical and mental symptoms, well-being, and social interaction. Some can be adequately assessed by means of established generic measures, whereas others may require additional specific measurements, such as sexuality and disease-specific symptoms and side-effects of treatment. Patients are often logically enough the only experts on the various impacts of their diseases or injuries, and so the ultimate judge of what treatment has achieved. Information from them about their experiences of disease or treatment is all the more important as their ratings do not correlate highly with those of physicians or health care personnel. The role of proxy rators needs further analysis. The extension of the basic technologies developed within somatic medicine offers exciting potentials for outcome evaluation in psychiatry.