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Sunday, December 9, 2007

Responsiveness of EQ-5D utility indices in alcohol-dependent patients
Drug and Alcohol Dependence Volume 92, Issues 1-3, 1 January 2008, Pages 291-295


The EQ-5D provides community-based preference weights (utilities) for calculating quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in cost-utility analysis.

This study aimed to analyze the responsiveness of EQ-5D-based utilities in patients with alcohol dependence.

ES were rather trivial to medium for all EQ-5D indices (ranging from |0.10| to |0.59|) related to a shift from “same” to “less” problems in the two anchors. Differences in scores of the EQ-5D indices revealing a shift from “same” to “less” problems according to the two anchors were not significant.

These results suggest that the EQ-5D indices are less responsive and require larger patient samples to detect meaningful clinical differences compared to the other used instruments. Additional research is needed to compare societal and clinical views on relevant change in health status in this patient group.

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Request Reprint E-Mail: oliver.guenther@medizin.uni-leipzig.de

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