Kidney Failure: Preference-Based Quality Of Life

Main Category: Urology / Nephrology
Article Date: 11 Jan 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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Patients with kidney failure have a seriously diminished quality of life, compared to the general population. However, those patients who receive a kidney transplantation tend to have a higher quality of life than those treated with kidney dialysis.

The literature on quality of life of patients with kidney failure, as measured with utility measures was summarized in the study "Preference-Based Quality of Life of Patients on Renal Replacement Therapy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis", published in Value in Health by Ylian Liem, Johanna Bosch, and Myriam Hunink from the Erasmus University Medical Center..

To adjust life expectancy for quality of life in economic evaluations, values elicited by utility measures are needed. A utility is a quantitative measure of the strength of a person's preference for a certain health outcome.

Utilities associated with the different therapeutic options, dialysis and transplantation have been reported in the literature.

Ylian Liem, PhD student at the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics explains, "We previously performed a meta-analysis of the SF-36 quality-of-life scores of these patients. However, these scores cannot be used for quality-of-life adjustment in economic analyses. The utilities, summarized in the current study, can. Furthermore, the study provides an overview of the recent literature on renal failure patients' utilities."

Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research and help health care leaders to make decisions that are solidly evidence-based. The journal is published bi-monthly and has a regular readership of over 3,000 clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide.

ISPOR is a nonprofit, international organization that strives to translate pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research into practice to ensure that society allocates scarce health care resources wisely, fairly, and efficiently.

Value in Health Volume 11 Issue 6
ABSTRACT

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