Supporting patients in obtaining and oncologists in providing evidence-based health-related quality of life information prior to and after esophageal cancer surgery

The overall aim of this thesis was to support patients in obtaining and oncologists in providing evidence-based HRQL data prior to and following esophageal cancer surgery. This thesis is divided in two parts. In Part I, we addressed the information needs of esophageal cancer patients prior to and following esophageal surgery, the barriers and facilitators patients experienced when discussing their information needs with their oncologist, and the development of a web-based question prompt sheet to support patients in discussing HRQL topics in the follow-up consultations after surgery. In Part II, we created an overview of patients’ HRQL prior to and following esophageal cancer surgery, and highlighted several issues that hinder the extraction of high quality and clinically applicable HRQL information.