OBJECTIVE Compare differences in health-related quality of life among blacks and whites to examine if race, diabetes, and visual impairment (VI) present a triple disadvantage in terms of quality-adjusted life expectancy. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Data were analyzed from the 2000-2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a nationally representative survey that contains the EuroQol 5D (EQ-5D). T...

Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) and Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), which capture life expectancy and quality of the remaining life-years, are applied in a new method to measure socioeconomic impacts related to health. A 7-step methodology estimating the impact of health interventions based on DALYs, QALYs and functioning changes is presented. It relates the latter (1) to the EQ-5D-...

This paper compares the relative performance of quality adjusted life years (QALYs) based on quality weights elicited by rating scale (RS), time trade-off (TTO) and standard gamble (SG). The standard against which relative performance is assessed is individual preference elicited by direct ranking. The correlation between predicted and direct ranking is significantly higher for TTO-QALYs than f...

Limits on health care resources mandate that resource-allocation decisions be guided by consideration of cost in relation to the associated expected benefits. It therefore leads to an increased demand for economic evaluation and medical technology assessment. Nowadays, cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) has emerged as a favored analytic technique for economic evaluation in health care. Currently...

Mathematical modeling based on a probabilistic approach for making decisions for organ transplantation can be successfully employed in cases when the choice of decisions can affect the results produced. In this study, the minimum probability of success required for organ transplantion in case of multi-donors is determined. The governing equations are constructed in terms of probabilities and so...

Objective To assess the claim in a Cochrane review that mammographic breast cancer screening could be doing more harm than good by updating the analysis in the Forrest report, which led to screening in the United Kingdom. Design Development of a life table model, which replicated Forrest’s results before updating and extending them with data from relevant systematic reviews, trials, and other m...

Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) have been used in the assessment of health interventions for three decades. The popularity of the QALY approach has been constantly increasing, although the debate on its theoretical underpinnings and practical implications is still ongoing. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), also widely debated, were shaped some 20 years later, broadly within the same c...

Objectives: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of switching patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus from human insulin (HI) to biphasic insulin aspart 30 (BIAsp 30) in South Korea. Methods: A published and validated diabetes computer simulation model (the IMS CORE Diabetes Model) was used to evaluate the long-term clinical and economic outcomes associated with switching to BIAs...