Health-related quality of life outcomes for patients with immune thrombocytopenic purpura.

Immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is a rare disease with infrequent serious bleeding making clinical trials difficult. One solution to this problem is to use alternative outcome measures such as health-related quality of life (HRQL). This review describes the various HRQL tools available to researchers including measures that are generic (applicable to many different disease types) and disease-specific measures developed explicitly for ITP specifically detailing the Kids' ITP Tools and the ITP-patient administered questionnaire. This review describes how incorporating HRQL tools such as these will allow researchers to move forward and do methodologically sound research.