Health related quality of life in sinonasal disease.

Objective measurements of sinonasal disease have proved difficult to standardise and correlate poorly with the severity of symptoms. Quality of life, which has been defined as the gap between expectation and experience allows the impact of disease to be quantified thus enabling comparison of different diseases and enabling examination of therapeutic response. A range of generic and disease specific questionnaires have been developed of varying complexity. These have been applied to a range of sinonasal conditions including allergy, infection and neoplasia. With increasing refinement they may become the main primary outcome measures in both clinical trials and practice.