Abstract
Objective: 1) To identify and evaluate patient-reported quality of life (QOL) questionnaires used in studies of oral and oropharyngeal cancer. 2) To provide information on the trends of use of each questionnaire according to language, country of origin, publication date, and type of treatment.
Method: Systematic review of the English-language literature. A search using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) queries (“Oropharyngeal Neoplasms” OR “Mouth Neoplasms”) AND “Quality of Life” was carried out by using a publicly available MEDLINE interface (PubMed). A total of 371 articles were identified and reviewed. We identified all English-language studies of oral or oropharyngeal cancer patients that measure QOL using a patient-reported questionnaire. Exclusion criteria are review article, comment, non-English-language study, wrong disease, and absence of quality of life measure.
Results: Identified questionnaires will be summarized. Each instrument will be compared against the standards for health outcome instrument development and evaluation of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Medical Outcomes Trust.Descriptive statistics regarding identified studies will be presented regarding questionnaire use by language, country of origin, publication date, and type of treatment.
Conclusion: Our results will help identify well-researched areas in patient-reported measures of QOL, and areas where more research is required. This is also the first study to objectively measure the number of studies that use each patient-reported QOL questionnaire according to language, country of origin, publication date, and type of treatment. Such data is crucial in helping adequate questionnaire selection for evaluation of QOL.
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