Assessing quality of life in a clinical study on heart rehabilitation patients: how well do value sets based on given or experienced health states reflect patients’ valuations?

Table 1 Approaches studied to value quality of life

Valuation		Patients’ VAS (reference)	GHS-TTO Germany	EHS-VAS Germany
Who values?	Patient	X
Who values?	Population (value set)		X	X
What is being valued?	Experienced health state	X		X
What is being valued?	Hypothetical health state		X
How is it valued?	Directly (VAS)	X		X
How is it valued?	Choice-based (TTO)		X
Scale adjustment	None	X		X
Scale adjustment	Anchoring for death		X
Endpoint when multiplied by time	QALYs (utilities)		X
Endpoint when multiplied by time	Quality-adjusted survival	X		X

Legend: VAS visual analog scale, GHS given health states, EHS experienced health states, TTO time-trade-off method, GHS-TTO Germany and EHS-VAS Germany represent two national value sets [6, 19]

ISSN: 1477-7525