EORTC Quality of Life Group celebrating 40 years

Brussels, 22nd September 2022: Today, we are excited to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the EORTC Quality of Life Group (QLG) during our biannual meeting in Amsterdam. It is a crucial milestone and an important moment to all look back at the achievements from the QLG over slightly more than four decades.

Over 40 years ago, the QLG was founded. From the start, the QLG has successfully brought together, developed, and been maintaining a rich network of professionals from a variety of backgrounds in the field of healthcare, including psychologists, psychiatrists, oncologists, radiotherapists, surgeons, palliative care specialists, social workers, and importantly research methodologists.

This cultural mix, defined as much in terms of professional background as language and geography, has proven invaluable in shaping the QLG’s approach to Quality of Life (QoL) assessment.

While in the 1990s, few trials at EORTC assessed QoL, the development in 1993 of the EORTC QLQ-C30 Core questionnaire paved the way for consistently using QoL assessment in our clinical trials, and in turn, for considering QoL as a secondary, and even primary endpoint in cancer trials.

From the Core questionnaire – being today one of the most-used QoL instruments in the world – to module development, the Item Library and the Computerised Adaptive Testing (CAT), not forgetting all the many QLG projects looking at developing guidelines or setting international standards for the interpretation of the QoL measures, the QLG can be proud of all its achievements over the past few decades.¹

Looking at the QLG, Dr Jaap Reijneveld, Chair of the QLG, highlights that: “we are a very active group, that continuously improves its procedures and transparency, constantly updates its tools, runs an amazing number of projects, and really puts effort into collaborating with the disease-oriented groups”.

“We are standing on the shoulders of giants”, recalls Dr Jaap Reijneveld, Chair of the QLG, referring to “all those members before us who have worked so hard to put the concept of quality of life on the cancer research map, and to make a success of this Group during the past 40 (and a bit) years”.

In fact, the past four decades are a very solid foundation for the four decades to come. We look forward to keeping up the good pace and to continuing to contribute to the important research around QoL.

The Quality of Life Group (QLG) strives to improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of cancer patients, through dedicated research and the use of HRQoL measures within cancer clinical trials and clinical practice. HRQoL constitutes an important aspect of cancer research and care: it gives a voice to patients, putting their experience at the forefront. The QLG is part of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC).

The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation, which unites clinical cancer research experts, throughout Europe, to define better treatments for cancer patients to prolong survival and improve quality of life. Spanning from translational to large, prospective, multi-centre, phase III clinical trials that evaluate new therapies and treatment strategies as well as patient quality of life, its activities are coordinated from EORTC Headquarters, a unique international clinical research infrastructure, based in Brussels, Belgium.
For further information, please visit the EORTC website: www.eortc.org