An assessment of the impact of developmental dysplasia of the hip on patients' wellbeing.

Within healthcare, several measures are used to quantify and compare the severity of health conditions. Two common measures are disability weight (DW), a context-independent value representing severity of a health state, and utility weight (UW), a context-dependent measure of health-related quality of life. Neither of these measures have previously been determined for developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH). The aim of this study is to determine the DW and country-specific UWs for DDH. A survey was created using three different methods to estimate the DW: a preference ranking exercise, time trade-off exercise, and visual analogue scale (VAS). Participants were fully licensed orthopaedic surgeons who were contacted through national and international orthopaedic organizations. A global DW was calculated using a random effects model through an inverse-variance approach. A UW was calculated for each country as one minus the country-specific DW composed of the time trade-off exercise and VAS. Over a four-month period, 181 surgeons participated in the survey, with 116 surgeons included in the final analysis. The global DW calculated to be 0.18 (0.11 to 0.24), and the country-specific UWs ranged from 0.26 to 0.89. This is the first time that a global disability weight and country-specific utility weights have been estimated for DDH, which should assist in economic evaluations and the development of health policy. The methodology may be applied to other orthopaedic conditions.

International Disease Burden of Hand Burns: Perspective from the Global Health Arena.

Measuring the extent and impact of a health problem is key to being able to address it appropriately. This review uses available information within the framework of the Global Burden of Disease studies to estimate the disease burden due to burn injuries of the hands. The GBD indicates that since 1990 there has been an approximately 30% decrease in the disease burden related to burn injuries. The GBD methods have not been applied specifically to hand burns, but from available data, it is estimated that about 18 million people in the world suffer from sequelae of burns to the hands.