Quality of Life Assessment : Key Issues in the 1990s

Reviews current methodology for assessing the health status of patients - their "quality of life" - and shows how this methodology can be applied to specific diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, angina and Parkinson's disease.

I. Philosophies, Concepts and Key Instruments Involved in Assessing Quality of Life.- 1. The new era of quality of life assessment.- 2. Assessing health-related quality of life for clinical decision-making.- 3. The Quality of Well-being Scale: rationale for a single quality of life index.- 4. Development, testing, and use of the Sickness Impact Profile.- 5. The Nottingham Health Profile.- 6 The McMaster Health Index Questionnaire: an update.- 7. A health index and output measure.- 8. The Index of Health-related Quality of Life (IHQL): a new tool for audit and cost-per-QALY analysis.- 9. A fifteen-dimensional measure of health-related quality of life (15D) and its applications.- 10. The EuroQol quality of life project.- 11. A WHO method for the assessment of health-related quality of life (WHOQOL).- 12. Indices versus profiles - advantages and disadvantages.- 13. The On-Line Guide to Quality-of-Life Assessment (OLGA): resource for selecting quality of life assessments.- II. Assessing Quality of Life in Major Disease Areas.- 14. Measuring the quality of life of patients with cancer.- 15. Measuring the quality of life of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.- 16. Measuring the quality of life of patients with Parkinson''s disease.- 17. Measurement of health-related quality of life in asthma and chronic obstructive airways disease.- 18. Measuring quality of life in hypertension.- 19. Measuring the quality of life of patients with angina.- 20. Measuring quality of life in psychiatry.- 21. Measuring the quality of life of patients with skin disease.- III. Viewpoints and Perspectives.- 22. Ethical questions and their implication for QOL studies.- 23. Industry perspectives on quality of life.- 24. A regulatory view.- 25. The cost effectiveness of pharmaceuticals.- 26. Requirements for health care purchasers.- 27. The importance of quality of life in policy decisions.- Appendices.- 1. Quality of Well-Being Scale.- 2. The Nottingham Health Profile.- 3. The McMaster Health Index Questionnaire.- 4. The Index of Health-Related Quality of Life (IHQL).- 5. 15D Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire.- 6. EuroQol Valuation Task.