Brown J, Sculpher M
Health Economics Research Group, Brunel University, Uxbridge, England.
Pharmacoeconomics. 1999 Jul;16(1):17-31. doi: 10.2165/00019053-199916010-00003.
Generic measures of benefit which employ individuals' preferences, such as the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY), are, in principle, the most appropriate outcome measure to use in the economic evaluation of cancer therapies. They can reflect the trade-offs between health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) and length of life, between different dimensions of HR-QOL and between the process (e.g. convenience) and outcome characteristics of treatments. This paper reviews the methods literature on preference-based measures of benefit in economic evaluation, with the aim of establishing good practice for applied studies using these methods. A systematic review of applied economic evaluations of cancer therapies which have used these types of benefit measure was performed with the aim of establishing whether studies in this area adhere to good practice. In total, 29 studies were reviewed, and the results showed that, in general, good methods are not being adopted. This may be due, in part, to authors not having the space in journals to detail their methods fully, but it is likely also to reflect the fact that good methods for the use of preference-based measures of benefit in economic evaluation have not been adequately disseminated.
采用个人偏好的通用效益衡量指标，如质量调整生命年（QALY），原则上是癌症治疗经济评估中最适宜使用的结果衡量指标。它们能够反映健康相关生活质量（HR-QOL）与生命长度之间、HR-QOL不同维度之间以及治疗过程（如便利性）与结果特征之间的权衡取舍。本文回顾了经济评估中基于偏好的效益衡量指标的方法文献，目的是为使用这些方法的应用研究确立良好做法。对使用这类效益衡量指标的癌症治疗应用经济评估进行了系统回顾，目的是确定该领域的研究是否遵循良好做法。总共审查了29项研究，结果表明，总体而言，未采用良好的方法。部分原因可能是作者在期刊上没有足够篇幅充分详述其方法，但这也可能反映出经济评估中使用基于偏好的效益衡量指标的良好方法尚未得到充分传播。
