OBJECTIVES

: Patients with venous leg ulcers (VLUs) usually experience pain, reduced mobility and distress, which reduces their health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Various instruments have been developed to measure HRQoL among patients with VLUs. However, few studies have investigated VLU patients’ HRQoL utility for cost-utility studies. Given the importance of measuring HRQoL within economic evaluations, this study aims to evaluate and compare two preference-based HRQoL instruments, the EuroQol-five dimensions-five levels questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) and the Sheffield Preference-based Venous Ulcer questionnaire (SPVU-5D) in patients with VLUs in Australia.

METHODS

: A prospective study was conducted to determine the HRQoL of patients affected by VLUs in Brisbane, Australia. Patients were asked to complete two HRQoL instruments: EQ-5D-5L and SPVU-5D. Data was collected from patients attending community wound clinics at baseline, 1-month, 3-month and 6-month follow-up. Descriptive analyses were conducted to summarize baseline patient characteristics. Baseline data were used to test the floor/ceiling effects, construct validity and level of agreement of the two instruments. Follow-up data were used to test the responsiveness of the two instruments.

RESULTS

: Eighty-one patients (mean age 75) were recruited at the baseline of the prospective study. The mean SPVU-5D score (0.74) was higher than the mean EQ-5D-5L score (0.67) at baseline. The ceiling effects were negligible, and no floor effects were observed for EQ-5D-5L and SPVU-5D utility scores. The discriminative ability of EQ-5D-5L and SPVU-5D instruments was weak. Only one hypothesis, that SPVU-5D score would increase with increasing EQ-VAS score, was fulfilled. There is also a lack of consistency between two instruments, where higher SPVU-5D scores were observed at lower mean utility values and lower SPVU-5D scores at higher mean utility values.

CONCLUSIONS

: Due to small sample size, there is high uncertainty in these estimates. Further studies with larger sample size are needed to compare the properties of these two instruments.