Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological movement disorder characterized by sensory symptoms and motor disturbances. While the underlying cause remains unknown, it is suggested that 20-25% of people with RLS are affected seriously enough to require pharmacological treatment. Dopamine...

Objectives: To assess the effects of premenstrual disorders on health-related quality of life (HR-QOL), hobbies and social activities, and relationships with others in the multinational IMPACT study. Methods: Women aged 15-45 years were screened for suspected premenstrual dysphoric disorder...

Background: Preference-based measures of health (PBMH) provide 'preference' or 'utility' weights that enable the calculation of QALYs for the economic evaluations of interventions. The Diabetes Utility Index (DUI) was developed as a brief, self-administered, diabetes mellitus-specific PBMH that...

Objective: To assess the psychometric performance of the National Eye Institute 25-item Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI VFQ-25) in Turkish diabetic retinopathy patients. Methods: Health-related quality of life was measured in a sample of 60 patients with diabetic retinopathy using both a...

Allergic rhinitis, as a medical condition, merits attention because of its prevalence in the population as well as the substantial economic impact of treating it. By virtue of their efficacy and low adverse effect profile, intranasal corticosteroids have gained recognition by healthcare...

Background: Asthma is a major public health problem in developed countries. In Canada, the prevalence of asthma is approximately 5 to 7%, with some provincial variation. A retrospective study using data collected in 1990 estimated the total costs of asthma in Canada to be between $Can504 million...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a relatively new target for disease management programs; however, asthma has long been a focus for such programs, and can provide a template for respiratory disease management. A major difficulty when developing disease management programs in an...

This review examines the current use of health status instruments, such as questionnaires, in randomised clinical trials in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). A computer-assisted literature search was done using information from January 1996 until May 1997. The articles included were reviewed in a...

Objective: A comparison of the implications of the application of the principles of equity and efficiency as two desirable but competing attributes of the organ allocation system. Efficiency is defined in economic terms as the standard cost per QALY model and equity considerations are included...