Quality of life assessment in head and neck cancer patients

Perhaps in no other area of oncology are health-related quality of life (QOL) issues more important than for head and neck cancer patients, because such critical functions as speech, swallowing, breathing, and the patient's cosmesis, social functioning, and sense of well being can be affected. Recently, several general health status measures and disease-specific QOL instruments have been developed and are reliable, sensitive, and precise enough to make QOL measurement a viable and accurate tool to assess head and neck cancer patients. Methodologies for QOL assessment have been established and preliminary studies demonstrate that communication, pain, eating, and emotional well being are some of the more important disease-specific domains of QOL for head and neck cancer patients. This article reviews the basic principles of QOL research, methodologies that are commonly used, existing general and disease-specific QOL instruments, and some of the more recent literature on QOL assessment in head and neck cancer patients.