Responsiveness of the EQ-5D Health-Related Quality-of-Life Instrument in Assessing Low Back Pain

Abstract

The EQ-5D index is less responsive than instruments specific to pain measurement, although it is capable of indicating clinically important changes. The lower responsiveness arises from EQ-5D's more limited gradation of severity and its multidimensionality.

Health-related quality of life (EQ-5D) early after injury predicts long-term pain after burn

“…This lack of significance may be due to a skewed distribution of scores in that an association has been demonstrated in other studies [34,35]. All patients reporting burn-related pain on the BPI-SF also reported pain/discomfort on the EQ-5D, although many patients reporting pain/discomfort on the EQ-5D did not report pain on the BPI-SF.…”

“…Pain severity and interference with daily life were mainly considered mild to moderate when assessed according to suggested classifications [33][34][35], and with a high correlation between the two scales. An important and novel finding was that patients reporting pain experienced a significantly lower HRQoL which when measured 3 months after burn was independently related to reporting of pain 2-7 years after the injury.…”

EQ-5D-derived health utilities and minimally important differences for chronic health conditions: 2011 Commonwealth Fund Survey of Sicker Adults in Canada

“…Using data from British Columbia, Canada, Marra et al [22] estimated the mean EQ-5D utility for rheumatoid arthritis to be 0.66. Whynes et al [37] estimated the mean utility score to be 0.64 for mild low back pain and 0.49 for moderate back pain for UK patients.…”

“…The EQ-5D was used in the study to estimate the health utility score and to calculate the MIDs associated with different conditions. The EQ-5D was found to be sensitive in terms of detecting meaningful differences in various diseases, although not as sensitive as disease-specific questionnaires [37,43,44]. We used data from a crosssectional study to measure health utilities and MIDs.…”

Buprenorphine transdermal system compared with placebo reduces interference in functioning for chronic low back pain

“…Trial patients completed the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) [19], a patient-reported survey instrument that measures the impact of both pain severity as well as the interference of pain on a variety of outcomes. As one of the most commonly used patient-reported instruments in CLBP patients [20], the BPI has been validated for use in this patient population [21] and has been shown to be responsive to pain-relief treatment in several studies of CLBP patients [13,22,23]. The current analyses examine changes in BPI scores as a function of treatment in order to test the efficacy of BTDS for reducing pain-specific impairments in physical, emotional, social, and everyday functioning.…”