What is HaNDLE-on-QoL?

HaNDLE-on-QoL is a unique online searchable database of all papers published from 1982 to present on quality of life in head and neck cancer that have used questionnaires.

Questionnaires are the main source of quality of life data. Currently HaNDLE-on-QoL has over a total of 3,000 papers and a list of 250 different questionnaires. For recent years for 2020, 197 papers were added. For year 2021, 222 and for year 2022 a further 185 papers were updated to the resource.

HaNDLE-on-QoL is a point of reference where by users can search the database by i.year of publication, ii.first author and iii.title of paper.

HaNDLE-on-QoL is updatable and will include new papers as they become available. Those using the database are will be asked to contact the lead author to highlight any papers omitted or errors on the dataset.

Why HaNDLE-on-QoL

It is hard to entity relevant papers published on the different facets of QOL in H&N Cancer. Pubmed Search on Head and Neck Cancer, Quality of life currently gives over 5,000 hits. It is difficult and time consuming to search the web for specific issues such as pain, nausea, speech without the risk of missing key articles.

• QOL in H&N is a growing field in terms of numbers of publications each year and it is difficult for the clinicians, nurses, and researches to keep up to date. An up to date knowledge base will help improve patient care.
• Although there are review articles in the literature, these are a selection of papers with no ability to keep up to date and search.
• When searching the literature considerable amount of time is need to check abstracts, hand search articles, exclude papers that are duplicates or not relevant.
• There is a huge array of questionnaires use in studies and this reflects the complexity of what is 'quality of life'. It is useful to have a repository that clearly identifies the questionnaires used so similarities, key messages and comparisons in future studies are possible.
• HaNDLE-on-QoL will be a tremendous educational resource for the healthcare professionals working in head and neck cancer.
• HaNDLE-on-QoL saves precious time for busy staff in searching for the HRQOL studies so that they can stay up to date more efficiently. It allows a functional dataset that can be interogated by member of the clinical and research fraternity.
• HaNDLE-on-QoL helps staff build skills and knowledge of HRQOL outcomes, so that they can be better informed though the evidence based when providing healthcare, undertaking audits/service evaluations and designing trials.

The value of this type of review/database is evident from the interest in and online access made to one paper that listed QOL papers from 2000-2005 in a similar way to what we are doing here.

This paper was: Rogers SN, Ahad SA, Murphy AP. A structured review and theme analysis of papers published on 'quality of life' in head and neck Cancer: 2000 to 2005. Oral Oncology 2007; 43:843-868. 'This was one of the 20 most downloaded articles from ScienceDirect in 2007. This demonstrates a considerable interest in your article amongst the scientific community'.