Measuring health-related quality of life in the clinical setting.

Quality of life is recognized as an important health outcome and several measures of quality of life have been well validated for use in clinical trials and outcomes research. These measures could play an important role in routine clinical care, providing valuable information on physical functioning, emotional health and other outcomes of interest to patients and providers alike. The literature to date largely reports on how these measures might be used in clinical practice, with few published studies on actual experiences with their implementation. Barriers to the use of quality of life measures, such as cost and time of administration, may decrease thanks to a new generation of measurement methodologies and tools.