A.D. Kaprin, N.Yu. Dobrovolskaya, A.V. Shestakov, A.D. Tsybulsky

Recently, in the worldwide practice the quality of life is considered to be generally accepted and highly informative indicator of health status estimation of the whole population as well as separate social groups. It gives quantitative evaluation of the many-component characteristics of human life activities - physical, psychological and social func-tioning. This is the reason why life quality study is used for evaluation and improvement of effectiveness of medical aid to patients. Health status study is considered to be full component of examination process and appears to be valuable and interesting information for the researcher in reference to internal status of patients, as the patient carries out subjective evaluation of his health presenting a real pattern of his psychosomatic state to the doctor. Quality of life study is carried out with the help of specially worked out questionnaire intended for symptom detection, laying down functioning parameters of patients and determination of performance status. Questionnaires can be either general - in other words used with chronic/long-term illnesses - or specific - applied for certain nosologic unit (particularly with oncological diseases). Apart from the general section of the questionnaire used for dif-ferent diseases, there are specially worked out modules applied for concrete nosologic form. Such methodology is indispensable in health status evaluation of patients during the whole course of treatment because it allows to ob-jectively estimate patient-s health as well as it gives an opportunity to establish the typical variant of psychosomatic reaction of patients depending on clinical parameters of the illness. Individual monitoring can be provided both in the course treatment and rehabilitation process. A special questionnaire of functional therapy study of bladder cancer (FACT-BL) is an additional specific module and used in conference with the general questionnaire FACT-G. It consists of 12 questions on estimation of body weight loss, appetite, urinary disorder, pain and its impact on functional abilities. FACT-BL is the most applicable for examination of patients with metastatic forms. However, it doesn-t allow to evaluate the influence of different complications on emotional state, professional and social activity of patients and it is restrictedly applicable with local forms of disease. Specialists from the European organization on oncological investigation and treatment have proposed the ad-ditional section (QLQ-BLM30) in conference with the standard questionnaire EORTC QLQ-C30 for life quality esti-mation of patients with bladder cancer. It includes 3 scales: estimation of urination function, gastrointestinal tract, sexual function. There are additional questions for estimation of surgical treatment influence on life quality of pa-tients. Taking into account the fact that there are different variants of bladder cancer treatment and their combina-tions, the section of chemotherapy impact (QLQ-HDC29) and the section of radiotherapy impact on small pelvis (QLQ-PRT21) was offered. Nowadays more and more attention is paid to influence of treatment on different aspects of life quality of pa-tients. Such estimation is especially relevant for patients with oncological disease of lower urinary tract, who live long life after getting such diagnosis thanks to the success in treatment this disease. Obviously, that long-term survival value can be associated with low level of life quality and for some patients such disbalance in treatment method choice can be of extreme significance. It often occurs that patients sacrifice their survival value to life quality. Nowadays influence of life quality on decision of treatment method choice is so great that many researchers consider clinical investigations of bladder cancer incomplete without evaluation of life quality level.