Mapping the Shah-modified Barthel Index to the Health Utility Index Mark III by the Mean Rank Method.

PURPOSE: To map the Shah-modified Barthel Index (SBI) to the Health Utility Index Mark III (HUI-3) in stroke patients, and to compare the performance of a recently developed method called the Mean Rank Method (MRM) against a popular method, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method. METHODS: A cohort of 473 patients who had their first clinical stroke diagnosis and hospital admission and were assessed using the SBI and HUI-3 at 3 months and/or 12 months post-admission. Observations were split to form a training dataset (N = 473) and a validation dataset (N = 245). RESULTS: In the training dataset, the MRM using SBI total score as the predictor produced a mapped utility distribution that closely resembled the observed utility distribution. It had almost no shrinkage of the standard deviation (P = 0.542), whereas the OLS using SBI total score and SBI item scores under-estimated the standard deviation by 28% and 26%, respectively (each P < 0.001). The MRM mapping gave better fit in terms of smaller mean absolute error and larger intra-class correlation than the two versions of OLS mapping, whereas the OLS gave smaller mean-squared errors than the MRM. Multivariate regression analysis showed that the use of OLS-mapped utilities tended to under-estimate both the mean utility of people who had no comorbidity and the utility-comorbidity association as compared to the observed utility-comorbidity pattern although the differences did not reach statistical significance (each P > 0.05). The MRM-mapped utility showed utility-comorbidity pattern more similar to the observed. Similar findings were obtained from the validation dataset. CONCLUSIONS: The MRM performed well. Mapping functions are available to map the SBI to the HUI-3 Utility Index.

Mapping the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study-Activities of Daily Living Inventory to the Health Utility Index Mark III.

PURPOSE: To map the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study-Activities of Daily Living Inventory (ADCS-ADL) to the Health Utility Index Mark III (HUI3) in people living with dementia (PWD) and to compare the performance of five methods for mapping. METHODS: A cross-sectional study of 346 dyads of community-dwelling PWD and family caregiver was carried out in Singapore. ADCS-ADL and HUI3 were rated by the family caregivers. Disease severity ratings and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) results were retrieved from medical records. A recently proposed mapping method called the Mean Rank Method (MRM) was described and applied, and the results were compared with regression-based mapping, including ordinary least squares, censored least absolute deviation (CLAD), Tobit and response mapping. RESULTS: The MRM produced a mapped utility distribution that closely resembled the observed utility distribution. The standard deviations (SDs) of the observed and MRM-mapped utility were both 0.340, whereas the SDs of the other mapped utilities ranged from 0.243 (response mapping) to 0.283 (CLAD). Regressing the MRM- and CLAD-mapped and observed utility values upon disease severity and MMSE gave similar regression lines (each P > 0.05). Regressing the other mapped utility values upon the covariates under- (over-) estimated the utility of good (poor) clinical states. However, regression-based mapping methods gave a better fit at the individual level, as measured by root mean square error, mean absolute error and R2. K fold cross-validation gave similar results. CONCLUSIONS: The MRM is accurate at the group level. The regression-based mapping methods are more accurate for making individual-level prediction. In addition, CLAD also performed reasonably well at the group level.

Evaluation on health-related quality of life in deaf children with cochlear implant in China.

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies have shown that deaf children benefit considerably from cochlear implants. These improvements are found in areas such as speech perception, speech production, and audiology-verbal performance. Despite the increasing prevalence of cochlear implants in China, few studies have reported on health-related quality of life in children with cochlear implants. The main objective of this study was to explore health-related quality of life on children with cochlear implants in South-west China. STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective observational study of 213 CI users in Southwest China between 2010 and 2013. METHODS: Participants were 213 individuals with bilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss who wore unilateral cochlear implants. The Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire and Health Utility Index Mark III were used pre-implantation and 1 year post-implantation. Additionally, 1-year postoperative scores for Mandarin speech perception were compared with preoperative scores. RESULTS: Health-related quality of life improved post-operation with scores on the Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire improving significantly in all subdomains, and the Health Utility Index 3 showing a significant improvement in the utility score and the subdomains of ''hearing," ''speech," and "emotion". Additionally, a significant improvement in speech recognition scores was found. No significant correlation was found between increased in quality of life and speech perception scores. CONCLUSION: Health-related quality of life and speech recognition in prelingual deaf children significantly improved post-operation. The lack of correlation between quality of life and speech perception suggests that when evaluating performance post-implantation in prelingual deaf children and adolescents, measures of both speech perception and quality of life should be used.