Quality of life assessment in cancer patients – recommendations for the staff of oncology and palliative care units

Quality of life (QoL) is a multidimensional concept regarding to self assessed patients’ situation. Although currently there is a lack of a universal QoL definition, the concept of QoL was introduced to medicine. Quality of life assessment is a valuable complement of the objective information derived through taking history, performing physical examination and investigations. A particular role of QoL assessment refers to oncology and palliative care patients. A definition of palliative care according to the World Health Organization states that an improvement of QoL is an ultimate goal of the multidisciplinary help offered to patients and families. It seems that treatment of underlying disease in oncology has the same goal, at least in those patients who are in advanced stage of cancer and who usually cannot be completely cured. In this article a review of a literature was conducted regarding QoL studies in oncology and palliative care including QoL definitions and psychometric properties of instruments used for QoL assessment. A review of the most commonly used questionnaires for QoL evaluation in oncology and palliative care was conducted including a modular approach in QoL assessment used by the EORTC (European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer). Practical guidelines were proposed in order to assess QoL in cancer patients in an appropriate way at in-patient units, home care and ambulatory care.