Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) of Tuberculosis Patients in the Intensive and Continuous Phase in a Private Hospital of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Context Tuberculosis is a disease with low quality of life (QoL) and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) due to illness, impairment of health conditions and death. QALYs combine the QoL as well as quantity of life with value judgments utility of individuals or society.
Aims To compare the QoL and QALYs of tuberculosis patients between treatment on the
intensive and the continuous phase.
Settings and Design This study used cohort design in a private hospital of Yogyakarta.
Subjects were patients with newly diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis and aged between
20 and 80 years.
Materials and Methods Data was collected using Indonesian version of St. George Respiratory questionnaire (SGRQ) and using the scenario time trade off method (TTO) at the end of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd month treatment. The score obtained was used to measure patients’ QoL and QALYs during the treatment phase.
Statistical Analysis To determine the differences of QoL and QALY in the intensive and continuous phase we used the paired samples t-test.
Results The average score of total QoL of tuberculosis patients using the SGRQ was 45.90% in intensive phase and 17.43% in the continuous phase (p < 0.05). While the average of QALYs values was 0.74 QALYs in intensive phase and 0.87 in the continuous phase (p < 0.05).
Conclusions Patients with pulmonary tuberculosis undergoing treatment with oral antituberculosis gain 0.74 QALY in the intensive phase and 0.87 QALY in continuous phase. Tuberculosis patients’ QoL and QALY are better in the continuous phase than ones in the intensive phase.