ArticleInternational journal of health policy and management2018
Measuring the Benefits of Healthcare: DALYs and QALYs - Does the Choice of Measure Matter? A Case Study of Two Preventive Interventions.
Article in International journal of health policy and management, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Global Patterns of QALY and DALY Use in Surgical Cost-Utility Analyses: A Systematic Review.PloS one · 2016Pooled it
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- Deriving monetary value of quality-adjusted life years through life extension from the value of a statistical life.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Integrating Environmental Impact in Health Technology Assessment: An Exploratory Study.PharmacoEconomics · 2025Article
- Cost effectiveness analysis of expanding tuberculosis preventive therapy to household contacts aged 5-14 years in the Philippines.Journal of clinical tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases · 2025Article
- Global, Regional, and National Burden of Non-Rheumatic Valvular Heart Diseases in Women: A Systematic Analysis of Global Burden of Disease 1990-2021.Global heart · 2025Article
- Cost-effectiveness analysis of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine administered to children under 5 years of age in the Republic of Moldova.Medicine and pharmacy reports · 2025Article
- A framework for quantifying the multisectoral burden of animal disease to support decision making.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Review
- The Costs and Cost-Effectiveness of a Two-Dose Oral Cholera Vaccination Campaign: A Case Study in a Refugee Camp Setting in Thailand.Vaccines · 2024Article
- Cost-effectiveness of screening for chronic kidney disease using a cumulative eGFR-based statistic.PloS one · 2024Article
- Does the Choice of Health Metric, DALY or QALY, Influence Conclusions of Health Economic Evaluation? A Case Study of Rotavirus Vaccine in Burundi.Applied health economics and health policy · 2022Article
- Estimation of Health and Economic Benefits of a Small Automatic External Defibrillator for Rapid Treatment of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SMART): A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2022Article
- Cost-Effectiveness of Amphotericin B Deoxycholate Versus Itraconazole for Induction Therapy of Talaromycosis in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Adults in Vietnam.Open forum infectious diseases · 2021Article
- Economic evaluation of a novel community-based diabetes care model in rural Mexico: a cost and cost-effectiveness study.BMJ open · 2021Article
- Health gap for multimorbidity: comparison of models combining uniconditional health gap.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2020Article
- Estimating a cost-effectiveness threshold for health care decision-making in South Africa.Health policy and planning · 2020Article
- Ranking Preventive Interventions from Different Policy Domains: What Are the Most Cost-Effective Ways to Improve Public Health?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- An Empirical Study on the Benefits Equity of the Medical Security Policy: the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS).International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 7 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe measurement of health benefits is a key issue in health economic evaluations. There is very scarce empirical literature exploring the differences of using quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) as benefit metrics and their potential impact in decision-making.
methodsTwo previously published models delivering outputs in QALYs, were adapted to estimate DALYs: a Markov model for human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination, and a pneumococcal vaccination deterministic model (PNEUMO). Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom studies were used, where local EQ-5D social value weights were available to provide local QALY weights. A primary study with descriptive vignettes was done (n = 73) to obtain EQ-5D data for all health states included in both models. Several scenario analyses were carried-out to evaluate the relative importance of using different metrics (DALYS or QALYs) to estimate health benefits on these economic evaluations.
resultsQALY gains were larger than DALYs avoided in all countries for HPV, leading to more favorable decisions using the former. With discounting and age-weighting - scenario with greatest differences in all countries - incremental DALYs avoided represented the 75%, 68%, and 43% of the QALYs gained in Argentina, Chile, and United Kingdom respectively. Differences using QALYs or DALYs were less consistent and sometimes in the opposite direction for PNEUMO. These differences, similar to other widely used assumptions, could directly influence decision-making using usual gross domestic products (GDPs) per capita per DALY or QALY thresholds.
conclusionWe did not find evidence that contradicts current practice of many researchers and decision-makers of using QALYs or DALYs interchangeably. Differences attributed to the choice of metric could influence final decisions, but similarly to other frequently used assumptions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.