Health related quality of life: is it another comprehensive evaluation indicator of Chinese medicine on acquired immune deficiency syndrome treatment?

Health related quality of life (HRQOL) can better reflect changes in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients and inform economic evaluation of AIDS treatment services, and the assessment of HRQOL can help us to detect problems that may influence the progression of the disease, hence HRQOL has become a particularly important assessment indictor for HIV comprehensive interventions. Being a multi-angle, multi-level, and diversified complex intervention, roles of Chinese medicine (CM) in AIDS treatment have been recognized and accepted by more and more patients, and HRQOL has been widely used to evaluate the comprehensive management effects of CM on AIDS. In this article, the authors analyze the definition and measurement of HRQOL, measurement of HRQOL of HIV/AIDS patients and effects of CM on AIDS, and give some reasonable advices for the usage of the scale of HRQOL. The authors hold that some new HRQOL instruments specific for CM treatment of AIDS should be developed and further prospective studies should be carried out to demonstrate the practicality, reliability and validity of HRQOL as an evaluation indictor for CM treatment of AIDS.