ABSTRACT
Health-related quality-of-life questionnaires are diagnostic tools to evaluate the impact of a disease on daily life and well-being ‘‘as perceived by the patient’’ (1). Measuring health-related quality of life has been described as a structured way of taking a patient history. While the traditional medical history taken by the physician focuses on individual symptoms related to the underlying medical disorder, such as pain related to inflammation or tumor growth, health-related quality of life focuses on the outcomes of these symptoms in terms of function and well-being. This means that a similar level of symptoms can have a different impact on the health-related quality of life of different patients, depending on their individual tolerance of this symptom.
