Health Utilities Of Hypertensive Patients In Vietnam

Objectives: With a lack of an essential evidence on utilities to support cost-effectiveness analysis of hypertension management in Vietnam, we aimed to gather data on health utilities for hypertensive patients and identify predictors of utility. Methods: Hypertensive patients, from 40 to 80 years old visiting the hospital were invited to take a survey. Short-form 36 version 2 translated into Vietnamese was used to interview patients. We applied a specific published model to measure utilities, that explains a reasonable share of variance, especially in those cases when only relatively small differences in health are expected. Results: 712 patients were included in the study. Mean utility of these patients was 0.72 +/- 0.14. Controlling for age, sex, blood pressure (BP) stage and history of stroke, we found that the utilities in older patients were lower than those of the younger groups, and statistically significantly differing if compared the extremes of youngest and oldest groups were considered (p= 0.03). Utility in males was higher than in females (p= 0.002). Patients with a history of stroke exhibited lower utility than patients without such history, although not statistically significant (p= 0.73). Patients with more than 3 comorbidities had lower utilities than patients without comorbidity (p= 0.01). Statistically in significantly relatively higher BP was associated with lower utility at 0.734, 0.726 or 0.712 in the groups with target BP, stage 1 and 2, respectively (p= 0.422). Conclusions: Mean utility was estimated at 0.72 in hypertensive patients in Vietnam. In contrast to BP staging and history of stroke, gender was found as a statistically significant predictor of utility. In addition, patients who experience more than 3 comorbidities or older than 70 had statistically significant lower utilities.