Abstract:
Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) have been used in the assessment of health interventions for three decades. The popularity of the QALY approach has been constantly increasing, although the debate on its theoretical underpinnings and practical implications is still ongoing. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), also widely debated, were shaped some 20 years later, broadly within the same conceptual framework but with a number of important differences.
This chapter provides an illustration of DALY and QALY calculation methods, offering practical instruments for assessing the impact of health interventions. Systematic differences between QALYs and DALYs are explained by reference to two examples: the prevention of tuberculosis, and the treatment of bipolar depression. When a health intervention is aimed at preventing or treating a non-fatal disease the relationship between QALYs gained and DALYs saved depends on age of onset and duration of the disease, as well as by quality of life and disability weights. In the case of a potentially fatal disease, a larger number of factors may determine differences between outcomes assessed with the two metrics. The relative importance of some of these factors is discussed and graphically illustrated in the chapter. Understanding similarities and differences between QALYs and DALYs is important to researchers and policy makers, for a sound interpretation of the evidence on the outcomes of health interventions.
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Notes
- 1.
Fox-Rushby and Hanson indicate the slightly different figure of 13.81 DALYs saved. This is because, in their calculation of Years of Life Lost (YLL), Fox-Rushby and Hanson determine the loss of life expectancy (L) as the “standard expectation of life at age (of death),” rather than the expectation of life at the time of disease onset minus the number of years lived with disability
Abbreviations
- DALY:
-
disability-adjusted life year
- GBD:
-
global burden of disease (study)
- QALE:
-
quality-adjusted life expectancy
- QALY:
-
quality-adjusted life year
- YLD:
-
year of life lived with disability
- YLL:
-
year of life lost
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Sassi, F. (2010). Calculating QALYs and DALYs: Methods and Applications to Fatal and Non-Fatal Conditions. In: Preedy, V.R., Watson, R.R. (eds) Handbook of Disease Burdens and Quality of Life Measures. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-78665-0_17
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