Validity and responsiveness of the EQ-5D in assessing and valuing health status in patients with somatoform disorders

Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Research

Rainer Schaefert¹  Wolfgang Herzog¹  Claudia Kaufmann¹  Hans-Helmut König²  Christian Brettschneider²  Alexander Konnopka² 

[1] Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 410, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany;Department of Medical Sociology and Health Economics, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany;

关键词: EQ-5D;    Quality of life;    Somatoform disorders;    Medically unexplained symptoms;    Validity;    Responsiveness;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1477-7525-11-3

 received in 2012-06-14, accepted in 2012-12-18,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe EQ-5D is a generic questionnaire providing a preference-based index score applicable to cost-utility analysis. This is the first study to validate the EQ-5D in patients with somatoform disorders.MethodsData of the EQ-5D descriptive system, the British and the German EQ-5D index and the EQ Visual Analogue Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire 15, the Patient Health Questionnaire 9, the Whiteley Index 7 and the Short Form 36 were collected from 294 patients at baseline, 244 at 6 months and 256 at 12 months after baseline.The discriminative ability of the EQ-5D was evaluated by comparison with a general population sample and by the ability to distinguish between different symptom severities. Convergent validity was analysed by assessing associations between the EQ-5D and the other instruments. Responsiveness was evaluated by analysing the effects on scores between two measurements in groups of patients reporting worse, same or better health. The Bonferroni correction was employed.ResultsFor all items of the EQ-5D except ‘self-care’, patients with somatoform disorders reported more problems than the general population. The EQ-5D showed discriminative ability in patients with different symptom severities. For nearly all reference instruments there were significant differences in mean scores between respondents with and without problems in the various EQ-5D items and strong correlations with the EQ Visual Analogue Scale and the EQ-5D index scores. Evidence for the responsiveness of the EQ-5D could only be found for patients with better health; effects were medium at the utmost.ConclusionsThe EQ-5D showed a considerable validity and a limited responsiveness in patients with somatoform disorders.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN55280791

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Brettschneider et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013