Using Time Trade-Off Methods to Elicit Short-Term Utilities Associated with Treatments for Bulbar Urethral Stricture

Shen, Jing; for the OPEN trial investigators; Breckons, Matthew; Vale, Luke; Pickard, Robert

Abstract

Abstract
Background Recurrent urethral stricture is usually treated with either open urethroplasty or endoscopic urethrotomy. Both
of the procedures cause short-term utility loss, which may not be captured by standard utility questionnaires due to the challenges of completing a standard instrument at the time of an acute episode of short duration, especially within a clinical trial
setting. We propose to use time trade-of (TTO) methods to estimate these short-term utility losses.
Objective The aim was to compare the use of two alternative TTO methods to elicit patients’ short-term utilities following
surgical treatments for recurrent urethral stricture.
Method Two variants of TTO (chained and conventional) were used. Six health profles were developed—three for each
procedure. Forty participants took part, with 20 randomly allocated to each TTO method.
Results Thirty-eight participants provided usable data for analysis. Estimated utility values decreased as the severity of the
health profles increased. There was no evidence that utility values difered between elicitation methods or procedures for mild
{ranging from 0.79 (standard deviation [SD] 0.17) to 0.83 [SD 0.20]} and moderate (ranging from 0.54 [SD 0.24] to 0.67 [SD
0.21]) health states, although they appeared to difer for severe health states (ranging from 0.29 [SD 0.20] to 0.56 [SD 0.24]).
Conclusion The study demonstrates the feasibility and value of eliciting patients’ short-term utilities. Given the small sample size,
the study fndings are tentative. Further research with a larger sample size is needed to determine the appropriate TTO method
to use and how the elicited utilities can be used in combination with standard cost-utility assessments to aid decision making.

Citation

Shen, J., for the OPEN trial investigators, Breckons, M., Vale, L., & Pickard, R. (2019). Using Time Trade-Off Methods to Elicit Short-Term Utilities Associated with Treatments for Bulbar Urethral Stricture. PharmacoEconomics - Open, 3(4), 551-558. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41669-019-0133-4

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 9, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jun 25, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Deposit Date: Jun 8, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 17, 2025
• Journal: PharmacoEconomics - Open
• Print ISSN: 2509-4262
• Electronic ISSN: 2509-4254
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 551-558
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41669-019-0133-4
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3778342
• Additional Information: Funding for the TTO study as part of the OPEN trial was provided by the UK National Institute for Health Research’s (NIHR’s) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme, Project 10/57/23. The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the HTA Programme, the NIHR, the NHS, or the Department of Health.; : Authors JS, MB, LV and RP declare no conflict of interests.; : Favourable ethical opinion for the trial was obtained from the NHS Research Ethics Service Committee North East—Newcastle and North Tyneside 1 (reference: 12/NE/0343).; : All participants provided informed, written consent prior to participating in a TTO interview.; : The dataset generated and analysed in the current study is not publicly available because no consent was sought for data sharing when TTO interviews were conducted. Access to anonymised data may be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request and would be subject to ethical review.