OBJECTIVES: Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a debilitating chronic inflammatory skin disease that may seriously affect various aspects of patients’ lives, including limitations in physical functioning, work productivity, social and sexual life. No studies have assessed health utilities by using a direct valuation method in this patient population. This study aims to measure health utilities by time trade-off (TTO) among patients with HS.

METHODS: A non-interventional, cross-sectional survey was carried out with HS patients in Hungary. Skin-specific quality of life was assessed by Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) and Skindex-16. Disease severity was rated by the Modified Sartorius Score (MSS) and the Hurley staging system. Patients were asked to assess their own current health in a self-completed composite time trade-off (cTTO) exercise using a 10-year timeframe. Conventional TTO was used to elicit values for better than dead health states and lead-time TTO for valuing worse than dead states.

RESULTS: cTTO responses of 194 HS patients were analysed. Mean age was 36.8 (SD 12.2) years, 61% were male. Utilities ranged between -1.00 and 1.00, with a mean of 0.76 (SD 0.30). Altogether 2% valued their own health as worse than being dead and 38% gave up no time in the cTTO task (‘full health’ answers). cTTO utilities exhibited a moderate correlation with DLQI (rho=-0.395), Skindex-16 (rho=-0.318) and a weak correlation with MSS (rho=-0.172). Patients with higher educational background (primary 0.69, secondary 0.76, tertiary 0.92; p=0.001) and females reported higher utilities (male 0.74 vs. female 0.82, p=0.057). Patients with Hurley I, II and III reported mean cTTO utilities of 0.82, 0.81 and 0.74, respectively (p=0.055).

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to report TTO utilities in patients with HS. Utility results revealed a meaningful health loss in HS patients. Our findings provide valuable inputs into cost-effectiveness analyses of HS treatments.