Commentary on Evidence-based assessment of health-related quality of life and functional impairment in pediatric psychology

摘要

Increases in survival rates of once life-threatening conditions (e.g., childhood cancer), coupled with awareness of the potentially iatrogenic nature of modern medicine has led to increasing calls to consider the child's health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in addition to length of survival. To meet this need, a number of patient-reported outcomes have been reported. The recent burgeoning of such measures creates some confusion for researchers and clinicians struggling to identify the "best" available measure. The article by Palermo et al. (this issue) sets out to survey the measures most frequently identified by pediatric psychologists and evaluate their quality. It complements related reviews concerning conceptualization and measurement of HRQOL. Of note, is the attempt to bring together not only measures of HRQOL but also measures of functional impairment (FI).