A comparison of the quality of life of hearing-impaired people as estimated by three different utility measures Un comparación de la calidad de vida de personas con trastornos auditivos estimada por tres diferentes medidas de utilidad

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the quality of life of hearing-impaired adults, as assessed by three different utility measures – the EuroQol (EQ-5D), the Health Utilities Index Mark III (HUI3), and the SF-6D (derived from the SF-36 questionnaire). Measuring quality of life in terms of utility enables the benefits of many interventions to be compared on a common scale, where 0 corresponds to death and 1 to perfect health. Utility scores for 915 new referrals (mean age 69 years, 55% male) to four UK audiology clinics were estimated. The mean utility scores on the EQ-5D (0.79), SF-6D (0.77), and HUI3 (0.56) were all significantly different from each other. The agreement between measures was most commonly moderate according to the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC=0.36 to 0.58). This suggests that different utility measures will provide different estimates of the effectiveness of hearing aid provision.

• Hearing-impairment
• Utility
• EQ-5D, HUI3
• SF-6D