[Evaluation of the quality of life during treatment]

Biomedical advances to further the quality of life (QL) of cancer patients must nowadays be complemented by psycho-social evaluation and intervention. The challenge is to quantify the qualitative and to objectivate the subjective. To evaluate QL during treatment of individual patients, open interviews are unsurpassed. However, to measure QL of patient groups, questionnaires are necessary. Some examples from the QL literature illustrate the main drawbacks of questionnaires: lack of sensitivity, specificity, and iterative applicability. To circumvent these problems, it is suggested to add a global self-assessment of QL to questionnaires. Such an instrument, Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment is briefly described.