Estimating Health Utilities for Health States of Patients with Stroke Using the SF-6D

Objectives Stroke is a non-traumatic, focal vascular-induced injury of the central nervous system. Short Form (SF)-6D is a preference-based measure of health developed to estimate health utility values from the SF-36. This study was aimed to estimate utility scores using data from a preference-based SF-36 for stroke patients in Nigeria. Methods SF-36 responses from 125 individuals with stroke were transformed into utility values using the SF-6D algorithm developed by Brazier and colleagues. We used excel programme to generate the SF-6D utility scores estimated using a set of parametric preference weights obtained from a sample of stroke patients. The utility was determined using ordinal health state valuation. Results The mean age of the participants was 63.95 years. The average duration of stroke was 22 months. The mean (Standard Deviation (SD)) ordinal health state valuation for stroke patients was 0.48 (0.13). The mean (SD) utility for female and male participants were 0.46 (0.15) and 0.50 (0.12), respectively. Conclusions Our results suggest that the stroke survivors considered their health poorer than expected and particularly women more than men. Our findings will be helpful to inform cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions to facilitate resource allocation for patients for preventing and managing individuals with stroke to improve their health outcomes.