Temporal change in health-related quality of life: a longitudinal study in general practice 1999-2004.

Background: In order to assess and plan for changing healthcare needs, the lack of available information regarding temporal changes in the health-related quality of life of a population must be addressed.

Aim: This paper aims to describe such changes over 5 years in a general population.

Design Of Study: Longitudinal postal questionnaire study.

Setting: UK general practice.

Method: This was a longitudinal postal questionnaire study in two general practice populations, using the generic instrument EQ-5D to measure health-related quality of life. Individuals were included if they responded to three postal surveys in 1999, 2001, and 2004 and there were three consecutive values of EQ-5D(index) available between 1999 and 2004.

Results: A total of 2498 subjects were included in the study. After adjustment for potential confounders (including ageing), health-related quality of life declined significantly over the observation period. The change in EQ-5D(index) was from 0.79 to 0.74 and for EQ-5D(vas) 76.8 to 73.3 (P for both trends <0.001).

Conclusion: Health-related quality of life deteriorated in these populations over 5 years. In an era of improvements in mortality, this has important implications for the use of health-related quality of life data in healthcare planning and resource allocation.