Abstract
The review consists of five parts. The term quality of life together with its definition by WHO is characterised in the first part, the second part concerns the issue of quality of life during old age.
Both qualitative and quantitative diagnostic methods are described in the third part, special concern is devoted to the generic questionnaires together with analyses of domains and variables finding out in the mentioned questionnaires. The fourtht part summarized the weeknesses of hitherto quality of life questionnaires due to which the diagnostics cannot be individualized.
The knowledge about interventions how to increase the quality of life in old people is presented in the fifth part.