McDonnell R, Maynard A
Alcohol Alcohol. 1985;20(4):435-43.
This paper presents estimates of life years and working years lost from alcohol-related premature death in 1983. It is then suggested that since lives saved or changes in the quality of life are outcomes of health care policies, measures of the value of life and quality of life years saved are needed for economic evaluation and efficient decision-making. Three methods of valuing life are outlined and ways of measuring the quality of life years gained from health care interventions are discussed. These methods are still at an early stage of development and are intrinsically complex and contentious. Nevertheless, it is argued that all outcomes of health policies need to be measured in order to make more efficient health care decisions. The estimate of life years lost from alcohol-related premature death presented in this paper is one indicator of the magnitude of this aspect of social cost. An important and natural extension is to assess the outcomes of policies aimed at reducing the number of premature deaths. Such research would greatly improve our knowledge of alcohol misuse and the effects of policies used to alleviate its associated problems.
本文呈现了1983年因酒精相关过早死亡而损失的生命年数和工作年数的估计值。随后有人提出，由于挽救生命或生活质量的改变是医疗保健政策的结果，因此经济评估和有效决策需要对挽救的生命价值和生命质量年进行衡量。概述了三种评估生命价值的方法，并讨论了衡量从医疗干预中获得的生命质量年的方法。这些方法仍处于发展的早期阶段，本质上复杂且存在争议。然而，有人认为，为了做出更有效的医疗保健决策，需要衡量所有卫生政策的结果。本文中呈现的因酒精相关过早死亡而损失的生命年数估计值是这方面社会成本规模的一个指标。一个重要且自然的延伸是评估旨在减少过早死亡人数的政策的结果。此类研究将极大地增进我们对酒精滥用以及用于缓解其相关问题的政策效果的了解。
