Question 1

What is the Meaning of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

The Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) measures health outcomes, integrating life quantity and quality. It assigns a value to each year based on its quality, from 0 (death) to 1 (perfect health). This metric assesses health intervention benefits.

Question 2

What is the Context of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

Not biological, QALY functions within health economics and clinical decision-making. It evaluates treatment effectiveness, public health programs, and policy interventions impacting human physiology. QALY standardizes comparisons of diverse health states across populations.

Question 3

What is the Significance of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

QALY provides a critical framework for evaluating therapeutic benefits, influencing resource allocation and clinical guidelines. It aids clinicians and policymakers in understanding treatment impact beyond survival, considering patient functional status and symptom burden. This metric supports informed decisions on protocols.

Question 4

What is the Mechanism of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

QALY is an analytical concept, not a biological process. Its "mechanism" quantifies health utility by multiplying years of life gained by a utility weight reflecting quality. This weight, derived from patient preferences, translates subjective health experiences into a measurable unit.

Question 5

What is the Application of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

In clinical practice, QALYs inform cost-utility analyses, comparing treatments like hormone therapies or lifestyle interventions. A new medication might extend life, but if years include significant side effects, its QALY gain could be less than an alternative offering fewer years but higher quality. This prioritizes cost-effective benefits.

Question 6

What is the Metric of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

QALYs are not measured directly like biomarkers. They are calculated by multiplying life duration in a health state by a "utility score." These scores, 0 to 1, derive from standardized patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) like EuroQol-5D. These tools reflect perceived quality of life.

Question 7

What is the Risk of Quality-Adjusted Life Year?

Accepted Answer

The primary "risk" of QALYs is potential misuse in healthcare policy, not physiological harm. Over-reliance without considering individual patient values, ethics, or health equity can disadvantage patient groups, like those with chronic conditions, whose "quality of life" might be numerically undervalued.

Quality-Adjusted Life Year

Meaning

Context

Significance

Mechanism

Application

Metric

Risk

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