title: An overview of the most commonly used venous quality of life and clinical outcome measurements.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Modern medicine should no longer rely solely on technical success to evaluate treatments. The treatment of venous disease has seen many new developments, insights, and treatment modalities. Combining clinical scores with quality of life (QoL) outcome measurements is becoming the new norm for evaluation of treatments. Many different outcome assessment instruments are currently available, indicating a lack of consensus.
  
  
  METHODS
  We set out to find the most reliable and comprehensive scoring instrument for clinical and QoL measurement in venous disease. In this review, we focus on the eight most widely used instruments. For clinical assessment, these are the Clinical, Etiologic, Anatomic, and Pathologic (CEAP) classification, Villalta scale, and Venous Clinical Severity Score (VCSS); for generic QoL, the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and EQ-5D questionnaires; and for disease-specific QoL, the Aberdeen Varicose Vein Questionnaire (AVVQ), Chronic Venous Insufficiency Questionnaire (CIVIQ), and VEnous INsufficiency Epidemiological and Economic Study on Quality of Life/Symptoms (VEINES-QOL/Sym) questionnaire. Each instrument is reviewed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  For the accurate evaluation of treatment outcomes, socioeconomic, QoL, and clinical aspects must be assessed. None of the available disease-specific instruments is suited to use in uniform outcome measurement for the whole spectrum of venous disease. A new combined QoL and clinical instrument is needed to validly assess and compare the outcomes of venous treatments. The VEINES-QOL/Sym is currently the most valid instrument to assess disease-specific QoL.
authors.affiliation: Department of Venous Surgery, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: fabio@catarinella.nl.
authors.forename: Fabio S
authors.initials: FS
authors.lastname: Catarinella
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Technology Assessment, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Fred H M
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Nieman
authors.affiliation: Department of Venous Surgery, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Department of Vascular Surgery, Universitäts Klinikum, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Cees H A
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Wittens
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014648:Varicose Veins / Q000150:complications / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D014680:Veins; D014689:Venous Insufficiency / Q000150:complications / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology