Quality-of-life management of patients with colorectal cancer.

We have reviewed management of the patient with colorectal cancer both after primary treatment and in the palliative setting. Although we have addressed quantitative measures of quality of life as applied to patients with colorectal cancer, the limitations of combining disparate variables that encompass morbidity, an idealized lifestyle, and personal variation in interpretation of that lifestyle into a single number or point on a graph are self-evident. The caring family physician has a better intuitive integration of patient complexity than does the outcomes analyst.