Evaluation of Health State Utility for Pelvic Organ Prolapse by Stage

An accurate measure of health state utility is needed to perform economic evaluations surrounding the management of pelvic organ prolapse.

The objective of this study was to obtain a health state utility measure for different stages of pelvic organ prolapse using healthy volunteers.

In this observational study, health state descriptions were first developed following an expert panel review completed in conjunction with a series of pilot interviews. They include a standardized symptom description along with representative figures of a particular stage. Participants were assigned to assess one stage of pelvic organ prolapse. After reviewing the health state description, volunteers completed the standard gamble interview (SG) and EuroQoL 5-Dimension (EQ-5D) questionnaire to calculate the utility of each health state.

One hundred seventeen individuals (117) were included in the final analysis; 39 individuals were analyzed for each stage. When using the SG technique, differences in the health utility measure (IQR) obtained at various stages of pelvic organ prolapse were not statistically significant [stage 2, 0.82 (0.68, 0.97); stage 3, 0.82 (0.65, 0.93); stage 4, 0.80 (0.60, 0.90); P=0.098]. With the SG as the referent, the health utility measure using generic measures (EQ-5D and visual analog scale) was significantly lower across all stages.

This study defines the health state utility for stages 2, 3, and 4 pelvic organ prolapse directly using the standard gamble interview approach among healthy volunteers. These values can be used in the completion of future economic evaluations surrounding the management of patients with symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse.