A retrospective study of 47 patients with head and neck cancer has been performed at the ORL clinic in Brno. The quality of life was evaluated according to an adjusted questionnaire composed of EORTC (European Organization for the Research of Cancer) QLQ-C30 and WOL (Revised Questionnaire of the University of Washington) approximately one year after the therapy ended. The statistical evaluation employed unpaired non-parametric analysis by means of the Mann-Whitney U-test and Fisher Exact Test. A statistically significant deterioration of the quality of life in a group of patients with resections in the area of oral cavity base and oropharynx was observed as compared with those with other tumor localization. The comparison of the quality of life of patients treated conservatively and those after radical surgery proved to be difficult in our group for rather low numbers of patients with individual localizations of tumors with significantly different prognosis. The authors are going to use less extensive questionnaires for monitoring the quality of life in the future. In addition to the TNM classification and subjective evaluation of the quality of life after therapy, the evaluation of the therapeutic protocol in the future will rather be based on molecular biology examinations of predictive parameters of the tumor.

        Key words: head and neck cancer, reconstruction, quality of life, therapeutic protocol.