An alternative to QALYs: the saved young life equivalent (SAVE)

An alternative to QALYs: the saved young life equivalent (SAVE)

Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) are based on the concept that the effectiveness of a health care programme is greater the more significant the health improvements it provides, the longer the patients get to enjoy the improvements, and the more patients who are helped.'`4 The concept is put into practice in the so called health status index approach: life years in different states of illness...

Too heavy to save or be saved.

Valuing “ Lives Saved ” vs . “ Life - Years Saved ”

There is long-standing debate whether to count “lives saved” or “life-years saved” when evaluating policies to reduce mortality risk. Historically, the two approaches have been applied in different domains. Environmental and transportation policies have often been evaluated using lives saved, while life-years saved has been the preferred metric in other areas of public health including medicine...

Valuing QALYs at the end of life.

The possibility of weighting QALYs differently for different groups of patients has been a source of debate. Most recently, this debate has been extended to the relative value of QALYs at the end of life (EoL). The objective of this study is to provide evidence of societal preferences in relation to this topic. Three cross-sectional surveys were conducted amongst Spanish general population (n =...

Using the years-of-healthy-life measure to calculate QALYs.

BACKGROUND The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is an attractive outcome measure because it captures both health-related quality of life (HRQL) and life expectancy in a single metric. We present a method for calculating QALYs that is simple, utilizes data that are free of charge, and may improve consistency in burden-of-disease investigations. METHODS For purposes of illustration, we calcula...