Estimation of utility weights for major liver diseases according to disease severity in Korea

BACKGROUND The global burden of liver diseases, such as hepatocellular carcinoma and liver cirrhosis, is substantial. In this study, we estimated utility weights of liver disease-related health states in the general population using a visual analogue scale (VAS) and the standard gamble (SG) method. METHODS Depictions of standardized health states related to major liver diseases were developed based on patient education materials and previous publications. To fully reflect disease progression from diagnosis to prognosis, each health state comprised four parts: diagnosis, symptoms, treatment, and progression and prognosis. A total of 407 participants from the Korean general population evaluated the health states using the VAS and SG methods in computer-assisted personal interviews. After excluding illogical responses, mean utility weights were calculated for each health state. RESULTS The utility weights for health states were significantly different according to the existence of inconsistency in general. According to the VAS results, the health state with the highest utility was 'Chronic hepatitis B virus infection' (0.64), whereas the health state with the lowest utility was 'Hepatocellular carcinoma that requires palliative therapy' (0.17). Similarly, the SG results revealed that the health state with the highest utility was 'Chronic hepatitis B virus infection' (0.85), and the health state with the lowest utility was 'Hepatocellular carcinoma that requires palliative therapy' (0.40). CONCLUSIONS The estimated utility weights in this study will be useful to measure the burden of liver diseases and evaluate cost-utility of programs for reducing the burden of liver diseases.