Real-World Reliability and Validity of EQ-5D in Chinese Patients with Cardiovascular Diseases

Recently, the collaborative research project between Normin Health and the Department of Cardiology at Xiangya Hospital, Central South University (led by Prof. Ruizheng Shi), titled "Real-World Reliability and Validity of EQ-5D in Chinese Patients With Cardiovascular Diseases: A Cross-Sectional Study," was successfully published in the ISPOR journal Value in Health Regional Issues. The study systematically evaluated the psychometric performance of the EuroQol 5-dimension 5-level (EQ-5D-5L) instrument in Chinese cardiovascular inpatients, examining its validity across disease subtypes and key clinical covariates.

Key Highlights of the Study:

Study Design & Population: A real-world cross-sectional psychometric evaluation conducted among 314 hospitalized patients diagnosed with coronary heart disease (CHD), atrial fibrillation (AF), or heart failure (HF), testing internal consistency, convergent validity, and known-groups validity.

Major Findings:

Robust Psychometric Performance: The EQ-5D-5L demonstrated acceptable-to-strong internal reliability and construct validity across diverse cardiovascular disease cohorts, confirming its feasibility for routine health-related quality of life (HRQoL) assessment in Chinese hospital settings.

Subtype-Specific Utility Heterogeneity: Significant variations in health state utilities were observed across clinical subtypes, with heart failure patients reporting notably higher functional impairment and lower utility scores compared to CHD and AF cohorts.

Clinical Covariate Influences: Dyspnea severity, functional heart failure classification, and comorbid diabetes were identified as key clinical drivers of reduced utility values, showing that generic health utilities must be interpreted alongside underlying clinical acuity.

Clinical and Policy Implications:

This study provides essential real-world methodological benchmarks for measuring health utilities in Chinese cardiovascular populations. The findings offer vital local parameters for cost-utility models, health technology assessments (HTA), and patient-reported outcome (PRO) endpoint selection in cardiovascular drug and device evaluations.

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