Had you looked up “quality of life” (QOL) in Index Medicus premature deaths. Procedures ranging from joint replacement priorto1975,yoursearchwouldhavebeenfruitless. Although and coronary bypass surgery to treatments for arthritis and thetermwasmostlikely?rstintroducedbyKarnofskyin1949 sleep disturbances do little to increase longevity; rather, they within the realm of chemotherapy for cancer patients (1), it make it easier for the person to function in his or her daily was not used as a key word in Index Medicus for another 26 life. A cynical perspective would say that clinicians are now interested in QOL to justify their existence, as interventions years. Since that time, there has been an exponential growth in such as hip replacement cannot be rationalized on the basis the number of articles about QOL. Figure 1 shows the number of preserving lives. However, as people live longer, they do of unique articles cited each year in Medline and PsycInfo: 7 in fact become more susceptible to disorders and conditions in 1970, 331 in 1980, not quite 1800 in 1990, slightly over that interfere with activities of daily living and consequently 6000 in 2000, and nearly 11,000 in 2005. Once the domain of decrease their QOL. mainly medicine and psychology, QOL has found its way into A second factor is the realization that QOL is not syno- every aspect of health care, including physiotherapy, oc- mous with the absence of symptoms: patients with serious pational therapy, social work, nursing, and others.
