Abstract

Background

The 6-dimensional health state short form (SF-6D) is a health preference measure used in economic evaluations of many treatments.

Objectives

To compare the results provided by the SF-6D index, when applied to a representative sample of the Brazilian population, using Brazilian and UK preference weights.

Methods

Five thousand individuals were assessed in the 5 regions of Brazil. Preference measures in healthcare were assessed using the SF-6D Brazil, version 2002. To calculate the single utility score, 2 preference weights were used: one established for the Brazilian population (SF-6D Brazil) and the other for the UK population (SF-6D UK). Agreement between the SF-6D Brazil and the SF-6D UK was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient, the Wilcoxon signed rank test, confidence intervals (CIs), and the Bland-Altman method.

Results

The mean values of the SF-6D Brazil and the SF-6D UK were 0.83 ± 0.15 and 0.84 ± 0.15, respectively. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.952 (CI 0.942-0.960; P.010). Using the Bland-Altman method resulted in a mean difference of 0.012 and the limits of agreement were between −0.077 and 0.101.

Conclusions

The present study identified very small quantitative differences between UK- and Brazilian-derived SF-6D scores. Tests of agreement, however, showed that the impact of using different sets of preference weights in the construction of quality-adjusted life-year might be considered irrelevant.