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Part of the book series: European Studies in Philosophy of Medicine 1 ((ESPM,volume 47))

Abstract

The notion ‘quality of life’ (QL) refers to how well an individual lives his or her life. This can be specified in terms of, e. g., the individual’s emotional response to his or her situation [5] or according to some ethical standard for how to live the “good life”. In both cases the QL of an individual depends on a number of circumstances such as education, social standard, etc. The more specific notion, health-related quality of life (HQL), has been defined in the following way by Patrick & Ericsson [6] “Health-related quality of life is the value assigned to duration of life as modified by the impairments, functional states, perceptions, and social opportunities that are influenced by disease, injury, treatment, or policy.” Even though it is important to specify what “as modified by” means, this definition indicates that HQL is a more narrow notion than QL, viz. the QL affected by health and not the the QL affected or determined by, for instance, education. For our purposes these conceptual remarks are sufficient, as the main objective is to present a very practically oriented analysis.

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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Björk, S., Roos, P. (1994). Analyzing Changes in Health-Related Quality of Life. In: Nordenfelt, L. (eds) Concepts and Measurement of Quality of Life in Health Care. European Studies in Philosophy of Medicine 1, vol 47. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8344-2_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8344-2_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4398-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8344-2

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