[An improved quality of life self-questionnaires specific for head and neck tumors]

The assessment of quality of life is an element that is now taken into account in the evaluation of therapies in oncology and especially for treatments connected with important sequellae. The lack of a specific tool measuring the quality of life of patients with head and neck cancers (HN), validated in French, leads us to develop and to validate a self-questionnaire. The construction of this questionnaire has been realised following a strict procedure (identification of aspects to explore, formulation and selection of items) conducting to a specific module of 17 questions with 4 modes of reply. The validation of the questionnaire has been undertaken on 116 patients that filled the specific module HN and the general self-questionnaire QLQ-C30 of the EORTC. The acceptability is excellent since only 4% of the patients have refused to participate to this study and that the number of missing data is very low. The value of the Cronbach alpha coefficient with the global score equal to 0.85, reflects a good reliability of the questionnaire. Global score correlation of the module HN with the different scales (functional and symptoms) of the QLQ-C30 are coherent. Global scores are correlated to the nature of the treatment (p0.001), to the evolution of the disease (p = 0.01), to the tumour site (p = 0.015) but not to the code WHO neither to the performance of a laryngectomy. The whole results indicate that we have a specific tool, reliable, and validated. Associated to a general quality of life questionnaire, this specific tool will be useful to complete the evaluation of therapies, especially during of comparative clinical trials.