When Not to Use a Generic: Measuring HRQoL in Chronic Digestive Disease Necessitates the Use of Disease-Specific Questionnaires

Excerpt

Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) is a complex, subjective construct that encompasses patient perceptions of the social, emotional, occupational, functional, and financial effects of a chronic medical condition [1]. Guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) strongly encourages measuring HRQoL as a secondary outcome in pharmaceutical clinical trials, further emphasizing the importance of questionnaire selection. In this issue of Digestive Diseases and Sciences, Chang and colleagues [2] report on how the MOS Short-Form 36 (SF-36), a widely used cross-condition measure of HRQoL, relates to symptom severity in a cohort of patients with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). The authors conclude the SF-36 may have limitations as a tool to evaluate HRQoL in these patients. …