Sensitivity and Responsiveness of Health Utility Indices (HUI2 and HUI3) Among Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Purpose: To assess the sensitivity and responsiveness of HUI2 and HUI3 among Type 2 diabetes patients.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in two purposively selected Nigerian tertiary hospitals. Six hundred and thirty-eight (638) adult patients were surveyed following their consent using the HUI2 and HUI3 (HUI23S4En.40Q) questionnaire. Patients’ clinical characteristics such as age, co-morbidity, severity of disease, and utilization of hospital resources were postulated a priori to be associated significantly with utility scores of HUI2 and HUI3. Student’s t-test and bivariate analyses were conducted to determine the diabetes-severity discriminatory ability of HUI2 and HUI3. The analyses were conducted with SPSS 14.0. A two-tailed significance level of 0.05 was used.
Results: Older patients had lower quality of life than younger patients. The overall health deficit of increasing age for HU13 was -0.2950 and that of overall HUI2 was -0.1553. The respondents without eye problem had higher quality of life than those with eye problem, in both HUI3 and HUI2 utility scores. Stroke was the most important patients’ characteristic that negatively affected HRQOL. Patients with duration of diabetes > 4 years had lower quality of life scores than their counterparts (≤ 4years).
Conclusion: Health Utility Index Mark 2 and Mark 3 were sufficiently sensitive and responsive to diabetes severity among Type 2 diabetes patients.