Background: To introduce the EuroQol 5D (EQ-5D) to health care professionals wishing to use it as a measure of health-related quality of life.
Methods: This paper is based on a review of studies using the EQ-5D in Spanish populations which include chronic and critical patients, health care users, and random samples of the general population in Navarra and Catalonia.
Results: Results are presented for three aspects of the EQ-5D: the descriptive system, the visual analogic scale, and the EQ-5D tariff. Presence of problems on the descriptive system and lower scores on the visual analogue scale were positively associated with increasing age, being female, lower educational level and social class, presence of chronic conditions, higher levels of restricted activity, visits to a health care professional in the previous 15 days, and hospitalisation during the previous year. The ability of the descriptive system and the visual analogic scale to discriminate between healthy individuals and critical and chronic patients was good. Social tariffs for EQ-5D health states have been obtained based on self-rated health and the rating of hypothetical health states (health states not experienced by the rater). Tariffs for hypothetical health states have been obtained using visual analogic scale and time trade-off techniques. Tariffs also discriminate between healthy and non-healthy subjects, and are a valid reflection of preferences for health states.
Conclusions: The Spanish version of the EQ-5D is a simple, valid and practical measure for its use as an outcome variable both in clinical research and in the allocation of health care resources: