Abstract
Interventional radiologists care for a large number of cancer patients with the breadth
of palliative intent minimally invasive procedures that we provide. Understanding
our meaningful impact on patients' quality of life is essential toward validating
our role in the palliation of cancer patients. As such, it is critically important
for interventional radiologists to understand common instruments used for the reporting
of patient's quality of life measures. Common instruments used to measure pain and
quality of life for cancer patients include the numerical rating scale, visual analog
scale, brief pain inventory, the European Organization for Research and Treatment
of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire, and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy.
An ideal quality of life instrument should be a patient reported outcome measure across
multiple domains (e.g., physical health, psychological, social), and be both validated
and reliable.
Keywords
palliative care - interventional radiology - quality of life - visual analog scale
- numeric rating scale - brief pain inventory - EORTC-30 - FACT-G
