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The purpose of this study was to test the validity and reliability of the Taiwan Chinese translation of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core-30 (EORTC QLQ-C30, version 3) and Quality of Life Questionnaire Lung Cancer-13 (QLQ-LC13) questionnaires. Consecutively 51 patients with lung cancer undergoing active chemotherapy and 48 such patients undergoing regular follow-up completed the questionnaires. The intraclass correlation between test and retest ranged from 0.46 to 0.85 for the QLQ-C30 and was 0.76 for dyspnea for the QLQ-LC13. The κ coefficients between test and retest ranged from 0.51 to 0.73 for single items of the QLQ-C30 and 0.49–0.68 for five of the nine items in the QLQ-LC13. The Cronbach's α coefficients were ⩾ 0.70 for all scales of the two questionnaires apart from that of cognitive functioning. The correlation coefficients between indices measuring similar dimensions of the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the SF-36 questionnaires ranged from 0.43 to 0.73, and that between the dyspnea scales of the two EORTC questionnaires was 0.70. Patients in the follow-up group revealed higher scores of global status/quality of life, and lower scores of nausea/vomiting, as also physical functioning. The questionnaires could also detect expected adverse effects of radiotherapy, cisplatin, and paclitaxel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to use survival-weighted psychometric scores (SWPS) to construct a ‘health profile’ for long-term survivors of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). The study cohort included all patients who had been diagnosed and treated in our institution from 1985 to 1999 and achieved complete remission after standard chemotherapy (n = 259). One hundred and four patients were interviewed by the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC)-QLQ-C30 questionnaire and the brief form of World Health Organization quality of life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) to estimate the quality of life (QOL) function of the cohort. Forty-one patients underwent bone marrow transplantation (BMT) as consolidation or salvage therapy; 63 received chemotherapy alone. SWPS for every functioning domain and symptom item was obtained by direct integration of the mean QOL function with the survival function of the cohort. A Monte Carlo method was used to extrapolate the life-long SWPS beyond the follow-up limit. The mean scores of EORTC-QLQ-C30 and WHOQOL-BREF did not differ significantly between patients who received BMT or those who received chemotherapy only (p > 0.01). In mean SWPS, patients who received BMT had significantly (p < 0.01) better SWPS in all of the functioning domains and symptom items of EORTC-QLQ-C30 and all four domains of WHOQOL-BREF. However, when the life-long extrapolation of SWPS was made, these differences diminished in global health and several symptom items of EORTC-QLQ-C30 as well as in the social and environmental domains of WHOQOL-BREF. Patients' perspective on QOL may be domain-specific and may evolve over time. SWPS may be useful to evaluate the efficacy of different treatment strategies for AML. Confirmation of the relative merit of BMT vs. chemotherapy alone from prospective studies is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responds to comments on the authors' article about the quality of life (QOL) of cancer patients. Estimation of QOL: Questionnaires used in QOL research; Application of rating scales; Approaches to scaling issues.