Valuing health-related quality of life in heart failure: a systematic review of methods to derive quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) in trial-based cost-utility analyses.

The accurate measurement of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and the value of improving it for patients are essential for deriving quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) to inform treatment choice and resource allocation. The objective of this review was to identify and describe the approaches used to measure and value change in HRQoL in trial-based economic evaluations of heart failure interventions which derive QALYs as an outcome. Three databases (PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane) were systematically searched.

Patient preferences for the delivery of cardiac rehabilitation.

Objective: To elicit patients' preferences for cardiac rehabilitation(CR).

Methods: A Discrete Choice Experiment was used to quantify patients' preferences for the delivery of CR. This survey-based method elicited the relative importance of different characteristics of a program.