Quality of life assessment involves a class of measurements fundamental to many aspects of health care planning and outcomes research. It is relevant for associating symptoms, adverse reactions of treatment, disease progression, satisfaction with care, quality of support services unmet needs and appraisal of health and health care options. Quality of life measures that do not consistently distinguish between groups are often only weakly related to objective criteria and show little convergence across measurements perspectives. Differences in quality of life appraisal are part of human adaptation and inherent in all quality of life measurements. This book presents current research in health-related quality of life, with a particular focus on disease and drugs.

The prevalence of neck pain disorders is increasing world-wide with approximately 10% of adult affected with neck pain. The treatment of neck pain depends on its precise cause and includes rest, heat/ice application, traction, soft collar traction, physical therapy, transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation, surgical procedures and pharmacotherapy. The current pharmacological agents that are used in management of neck pain include non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, centrally acting analgesia, acetaminophen, muscle relaxants, topical painkillers and/or topical anaesthesia, local steroids and/or local anaesthetics injections and antimicrobials. This book focuses on the concepts of pharmacotherapy of neck pain disorders in respect to the cause of neck pain, the nature of pain, the mechanism of drug action, the practice of local injections with radiologist intervention, as well as the quality of life and the long term harmful effects including medicines abused.