A mother of a prematurely born son reviews several quality-of-life research studies that highlight the disparity between self-reported quality of life and physician estimates of quality of life.
Two physicians offer commentaries on the best course of action for a part-time janitor with no health insurance to receive the proper standard of care for his chronic recurrent prostatitis.
A bioethicist argues that two journal articles about quality of life-adjusted years research oversimplifies the issue and do not take into consideration people's abilities to adapt to disability and disease.
A health economics professor believes more research is needed on quality of life-adjusted years to explore the way we describe health states, the elicitation of patient values, and how to develop methods for obtaining informed general population preferences.
Elly A. Stolk, MSc and Floortje E. van Nooten, MSc
Two medical technology researchers argue that patients' own valuations of their health states may result in devaluation of interventions that can help them.