A comparison of European, Polish, Slovenian and British EQ‑5D‑3L value sets using a Hungarian sample of 18 chronic diseases

Background In the Central and Eastern European region, the British EQ-5D-3L value set is used commonly in quality of life (QoL) studies. Only Poland and Slovenia have country-specifc weights. Our study aimed to investigate the impact of value set choice on the evaluation of 18 chronic conditions in Hungary. Methods Patients’ EQ-5D-3L index scores were calculated using the VAS-based Slovenian and European and the time-tradeof-based Polish and British value sets. We performed pairwise comparisons of mean index values by dimensions, diagnoses and age groups. We evaluated disease burden by comparing index values matched by age and gender in each condition with those of the general population of the CEE region in all four value sets. Results Altogether, 2421 patients (55% female) were included in our sample with the average age of 55.87 years (SD=17.75). The average Slovenian, European, Polish and British EQ-5D-3L scores were 0.598 (SD=0.279), 0.661 (SD=0.257), 0.770 (SD=0.261) and 0.644 (SD=0.279), respectively. We found highly signifcant diferences in most diagnoses, with the greatest diference between the Polish and Slovenian index values in Parkinson’s disease (0.265). Systematic pairwise comparison across all conditions and value sets revealed greatest diferences between the time-trade-of (TTO) and VAS-based value sets as well as varying sensitivity of the disease burden evaluations of chronic disease conditions to the choice of value sets. Conclusions Our results suggest that the choice of value set largely infuences the health state utility results in chronic diseases, and might have a signifcant impact on health policy decisions.