OBJECTIVE: There is increasing interest in minimizing responder burden when eliciting health related quality-of-life (HRQoL). We conducted a systematic review of measurement properties of two HRQoL instruments: the disease-specific questionnaire, the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure questionnaire (MLHFQ) and the generic questionnaire, (SF-36), in congestive heart failure (CHF). METHODS: We searched MEDLINE, PubMed, Google Scholar, American Heart Association and Texas Heart Institute. Using MESH terms: Minnesota living with heart failure, MLHFQ, SF-36 and chronic heart failure questionnaire. We included studies that used SF-36 with MLHFQ. Studies had to be published in English between 1980 and 2005. We assessed the following properties: reliability (Cronbach's alpha, and Pearson's correlation), construct validity (longitudinal correlations) using multi-trait, multi-method matrix (MTMM), within and between domains for subscales and summary scores and responsiveness (effect size). RESULTS: Our search rendered 28 references, 15 papers (11 trials and 4 reviews). All except one study revealed consistent outcome measures in domain correlation, regardless of whether subscales or summary scores were used. The Cronbach's alpha for the MLHFQ were above 0.8, and ranged from 0.78 to 0.93 for the SF-36. The Pearson's correlations exhibit that the emotional domains between the two instruments demonstrate much lower correlations (ranged from 0.409 to 0.52) compared to that of their physical domains (ranged from 0.54 to 0.72). The effect sizes for the emotional domains, especially for the SF-36, were lower than that of physical domain. Similar findings were also found in using MTMM approach. At the same time, significant correlation between the MLHFQ physical and the emotional domains found in one study warrants close examination. CONCLUUSIONS: The measurement properties MLFHQ and SF-36 in CHF are well documented as independent measures, however concurrent use illustrated inconsistencies between similar domains giving one reason to pause when considering mapping from one instrument to the other.