(376) Health status measurements vs. utilities in quality of life assessment of chronic pain

Utility scores are commonly used to quantify health-related quality of life (HRQOL). They reflect a subject’s preference for a particular health outcome, and as such, serve as a measure of disease burden. Lower scores (range 0 to 1) indicate greater burden. The SF-12 is another widely used HRQOL measure that uses self-perceived health status as a reflection of disease burden. It provides information on the individual components of HRQOL and provides two summary measures of physical and mental health (range 0 to 100) based on population norms: the Physical Component Score (PCS) and the Mental Component Score (MCS). Our objective was to compare the HRQOL of chronic pain patients (duration > 6 months) as determined by the SF-12 survey with that obtained by the time trade-off (TTO) utility method. A total of 138 subjects from the Emory Center for Pain Medicine and Spine Center completed an SF-12 survey, followed by a face-to-face interview to derive the TTO utilities for their current overall health state, which includes comorbidities and their state of pain. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated. The cohort was 38% male, 79% Caucasian, and averaged 55 years old (SD=16). Mean (SD) PCS and MCS were 28.3(8.9) and 52.7(9.6), respectively. The TTO utility was 0.740(0.329). The TTO utility and the PCS had a correlation coefficient of 0.242 (p = 0.01). No statistically significant relationship between the TTO utility and the MCS was found. While both utilities and SF-12 demonstrate the large burden of chronic pain, HRQOL assessments derived from these methods display only a weakly positive correlation. This suggests that TTO utilities and the SF-12 describe different aspects of HRQOL. Further studies are warranted to investigate these trends.