The clinical use of quality-of-life scales in neurological disorders

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Objective Quality of life (QoL) is a growing issue in medicine, particularly in the evaluation of rehabilitative care. The concept of QoL is included in and expands the definition of health given by the WHO (World Health Organization) and comprises complete physical, mental, and social well-being. It expresses the degree of satisfaction in various areas as a result of the opportunities that arise during one's lifetime despite the restrictions and impediments that life itself puts forth. The last decade has exponentially increased the number of studies on QoL, although they are still limited. Methods We performed a literature review on the QoL scales used in patients with neurological disorders. Results Recent studies have shown the importance of QoL assessment because standard treatments do not assess the treatment impact felt by the patient. In fact, by understanding the impact of treatment on survival and QoL, one can make a clearer interpretation of the health of the patient. Conclusion This review has adopted an innovative holistic methodological approach, which allowed a global evaluation of the comfort reported by the patients. The scales applied in this study allowed to choose the most suitable therapeutic strategies and programme individual therapeutic treatment.