Quality of life for patients treated for head and neck carcinoma

A large consensus admits that quality of life is a multi-factorial concept including at least physical, psychical and social dimensions of the disease as well as symptoms related to the disease and to the requested treatments. Quality of life is actually considered as one of the major assessment criteria for taking care of patients with cancer and to evaluate results of clinical trials. Self-evaluation by the patient is considered as the gold standard to evaluate the clinical symptoms. This evaluation is not unambiguous. Medical doctors underestimate patients' symptoms. In the field of surgery, development of organ preservation strategies should be considered as one of the major improvement observed in the modern era of head and neck oncology. The role of xerostomia, the most frequent complication reported after head and neck radiation therapy, is major in this field. However, odynophagia is considered as the most detrimental component of quality of life. Radiation oncologists should realize the role of these parameters in order to include these concepts as relevant in the global evaluation of treatments. (authors)