Measuring Patient Benefit from Otorhinolaryngological Surgery and Therapy

Abstract

The Glasgow Benefit Inventory (GBI) is a measure of patient benefit developed especially for otorhinolaryngological (ORL) interventions. Patient benefit is the change in health status resulting from health care intervention. The GBI was developed to be patient-oriented, to be maximally sensitive to ORL interventions, and to provide a common metric to compare benefit across different interventions. The GBI is an 18-item, postintervention questionnaire intended to be given to patients to fill in at home or in the outpatient clinic. In the first part of the paper, five different ORL interventions were retrospectively studied: middle ear surgery to improve hearing, provision of a cochlear implant, middle ear surgery to eradicate ear activity, rhinoplasty, and tonsillectomy. A criterion that was specific to the intervention was selected for each study, so that the patient outcome could be classified as above and below criterion. In all five interventions, the GBI was found to discriminate between above- and below-criterion outcomes. The second part of the paper reports on the results and implications of a factor analysis of patient responses. The factor structure was robust across the study, and so led to the construction of subscales. These subscales yield a profile score that provides information on the different types of patient benefit resulting from ORL interventions. The GBI is sensitive to the different ORL interventions, yet is sufficiently general to enable comparison between each pair of interventions. It provides a profile score, which enables further breakdown of results. As it provides a patient-oriented common metric, it is anticipated that the GBI will assist audit, research, and health policy planning.

Changes in quality of life shortly after routine cataract surgery

“…3 The GBI is relatively simple, but has a number of advantages: it was developed to be patientcentred and specifically sensitive to change since an intervention; 4 its use has been validated in a range of procedures already; it is not procedure specific, thereby allowing comparison across different interventions; it is also remarkably easy and rapid to administer, needing only to be administered once, and involving only 18 question each with only 5 possible responses. The clinic staff found it easy to use, with patients happy to complete the survey.…”

“…4 It yields an overall score and three sub-scores. The ; the questionnaire can also be downloaded from this webiste).…”

“…2,3 The Glasgow Benefit Inventory (GBI) is a validated post-interventional questionnaire originally developed to assess changes in quality of life after otorhinolaryngological procedures. 4 The GBI is not procedure specific, thus having the advantage of enabling comparison across different interventions even in different specialties, which can be valuable in terms of health resource planning. It also has the advantage of ease of use in that it is administered only once (other instruments require administration before and after the intervention).…”

Calidad de vida tras la cirugía del schwannoma vestibular

“…Los servicios de salud tienen la responsabilidad de disponer y utilizar métodos de medida de resultados, imprescindibles en la toma de decisiones, en la evaluación de los servicios sanitarios, y que ayuden a optimizar los recursos 58 .…”

“…Es un cuestionario postintervención, que como hemos mencionado, está específicamente creado para procedimientos otorrinolaringológico 71 , y su diseño permite que pueda aplicarse de forma retrospectiva.…”