David F. Cella, PhD

Since our first "Quality of Life in Current Oncology Practice and Research" symposium was held at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California in February 1989, and published in ONCOLOGY in May 1990, there has been a marked increase in the use of quality of life measures to determine the outcomes of interventions in clinical oncology. Measuring the effects of anemia treatment with quality of life tools is a fine example of the importance of these tools to gauge the impact and clinical significance of interventions. It is, therefore, both timely and relevant that we dedicate our fifth symposium to the management of anemia in patients with cancer.

Often, new treatments for cancer are evaluated solely on the basis of increased survival, depriving us of valuable information about other benefits and drawbacks of these treatments. It is important to raise the question of the

This publication is the fourth in a series of quality of life symposia proceedings. The title of our first symposium, which took place in 1989, was "Quality of Life in Current Oncology Practice and Research." In the foreword to the first proceedings, we