Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life

Guest: Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS
Host: Jay Goldstein, MD

In its 1948 charter constitution, the World Health Organization defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being." Today, to measure this totality of well-being, we measure quality of life. Host Dr. Jay Goldstein discusses how quality of life measurements can be incorporated into everyday practice, with Dr. Brennan Spiegel, assistant professor of medicine in the division of digestive diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. How is health-related quality of life measured objectively in clinical trials? To what degree do quality of life endpoints trump physiological endpoints?