Quality of life in gastric cancer

AIM: To summarize the empirical research on assessing quality of life (QOL) in patients with gastric carcinoma. METHODS: Literature searches were conducted in MedLine from 1966 to February 2004. RESULTS: Twenty-six studies were identified. QOL was used as an outcome measure in virtually all identified studies, such as those examining the effects of gastric cancer and various medical or surgical treatments in the patients. QOL was assessed mainly with generic measures; the social dimensions of QOL were largely neglected.The lack of gastric cancer-specific QOL measures hampers QOL research up to now.The gastric cancer-specific EORTC-QLQ-STO22 and the FACT-Ga are important additions to the arsenal of disease-specific QOL measures. In most of the studies, the label QOL is used for questionnaires, which only assess symptoms or performance status, or are physician-reported rather than patient-reported outcomes. CONCLUSION: QOL in patients with gastric cancer deserves more systematic studies, especially as one of the outcome measures in randomized clinical trials. Results of studies that include QOL in patients with gastric cancer should be applied in clinical care, which aims at improving QOL of these patients.