Outcome Assessment for Cost-Utility Evaluations: SF-6D vs. EQ-5D

What was formerly known as medicine has now become health care, an amalgam of several disciplines, including health economics. The role of health economics is fairly straightforward, namely to facilitate priority-setting under the objective of maximizing population health. For that purpose, cost-utility evaluations, providing a cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) for different choices, have become popular. If cost-utility evaluations are to be run alongside clinical trials, trialists have to append an instrument for the measurement of generic, preference-based outcomes. The objective of this chapter is to provide some basis for the choice of instrument to assess generic, preference-based outcomes in clinical trials conducted in low back pain.