Quality of life in non‐melanoma skin cancer

Basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are the most common malignancies and are classified under the umbrella of non‐melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). NMSC exerts a small but appreciable decrement in quality of life (QOL). The impact posed may arise from the tumour itself or as a result of treatment, and through symptoms, functional limitations, cosmetic burden and auxiliary considerations such as cost and disturbance to the activities of daily living. Researchers have evaluated this burden using a variety of outcome measures including generic, dermatology‐specific and disease‐specific instruments. The skin cancer index represents a promising disease‐specific patient‐reported outcome measure in this setting. To overcome some of the constraints inherent to disease‐specific instruments, and to allow comparisons with other diseases, utility weightings have been developed. Utility weightings represent a cardinal measure for a specific health status and are established through methods such as the standard gamble, willingness‐to‐pay and time trade‐off, and have also been employed to generate utility weightings for NMSC. Utilities are becoming increasingly important as a means of comparing health states across medicine and are of particular importance from a health‐care policy perspective as they are used for resource allocation. The small but definite impact on the individual's QOL posed by NMSC should be a clinical consideration for physicians and it should be recognised by researchers as a potential outcome measure.