Adolescent and parental utilities for the health states associated with pelvic inflammatory disease.

Purpose: There is limited information about how the consumers of adolescent pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) care value health states associated with the disorder. The aim of this study is to determine and compare adolescent and parent PID-related health utilities.

Methods: Adolescent girls (N=134) and parents (N=121) completed a web-based utility elicitation survey. Participants reviewed five scenarios describing the health states associated with PID (outpatient treatment (mild-moderate disease), inpatient treatment (severe disease), ectopic pregnancy, infertility and chronic abdominal pain). After each scenario, participants were asked to rate health-related quality of life (HRQL) using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and to complete a time trade-off (TTO) assessment. Data were evaluated using multiple linear (VAS) and quantile (TTO) regression analyses.

Results: Adolescents had significantly lower mean valuations (p<0.01) than the parents on the VAS for HRQL in each health state (outpatient (62 vs 76), inpatient (57 vs 74), ectopic (55 vs 73), infertility (59 vs 68) and chronic abdominal pain (48 vs 61)). Using quantile regression analysis, adolescents were also willing to give up more time for health gains indicated by lower median TTO scores (p<0.01) for outpatient treatment (0.98 vs 1.0), inpatient treatment (0.96 vs 1.0) and ectopic pregnancy (0.98 vs 1.0).

Conclusions: The authors demonstrate that adolescents assign more disutility (lower valuations) than parents for HRQL and three of five of the TTO assessments for PID-related health states. Future economic evaluations using patient-specific preferences to determine resource allocation for PID management in adolescents should include adolescent health outcomes and utilities.