Quality-of-life assessment in bladder cancer

In the past decade the need to assess the quality of life (QOL) of patients with malignant disease has been increasingly recognized. Traditionally, clinicians have mainly focused their attention on the more classic aspects of evaluating cancer treatment outcome, such as control of symptoms, response to treatment, relapse, and survival, whereas less attention has been paid to the effects of treatment on the QOL. In this review some general aspects of QOL assessment and published urological QOL data with respect to bladder carcinoma are discussed.