Health-related quality of life in patients with melanoma: overview of instruments and outcomes.

The increasing public health burden of melanoma warrants evaluation of quality-of-life outcomes and the instruments most commonly used to measure quality of life in patients with melanoma. A review of the published literature focusing on quality-of-life outcomes in melanoma patients was performed to appraise the instruments used for assessment and the significant findings. In general, generic instruments continue to be most commonly used in the evaluation of quality of life despite the lack of responsiveness to changes in quality of life in subsets of patients. Cancer-specific and melanoma-specific instruments may be more suited for longitudinal clinical assessments.