The patient tells it! The importance of patient's quality of life perception in pulmonary arterial hypertension risk assessment

Abstract

Everyone wants quality of life (QoL), regardless whether a person is healthy or diseased. However, QoL means something different for every individual. QoL is not only influenced by the individual's preferences, wishes and expectations towards life, but also by the time of living, geographical, socioeconomic and political environment and, of course, the health state, which all contribute to the individual's resources to live with a high quality in happiness and satisfaction. The World Health Organization defines QoL as the individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns [1]. Due to this complexity and subjectively differently weighted factors, and also the fact that different disciplines define QoL differently, measurement of QoL is challenging in health and disease [2].