Welcome to the Podiatry Arena forums, for communication between foot health professionals about podiatry and related topics.
You are currently viewing our podiatry forum as a guest which gives you limited access to view all podiatry discussions and access our other features. By joining our free global community of Podiatrists and other interested foot health care professionals you will have access to post podiatry topics (answer and ask questions), communicate privately with other members (PM), upload content, view attachments, receive a weekly email update of new discussions, earn CPD points and access many other special features. Registered users do not get displayed the advertisments in posted messages. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our global Podiatry community today!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.
Reliability of self-reported willingness-to-pay and annual income in patients treated for toenail onychomycosis.
Cham PM, Chen SC, Grill JP, Jonk YC, Warshaw EM. Br J Dermatol. 2007 May;156(5):922-8.
Quote:
BACKGROUND: Willingness-to-pay (WTP) is a health economics measure that has recently been used for skin diseases to evaluate patients' quality of life. However, the reliability of this measure has not been investigated in the dermatology literature and is essential in validating its use in health services research. OBJECTIVES: This study evaluated the test-retest reliability of self-reported annual income and WTP, a health economics measure of disease impact, in patients with toenail onychomycosis.
METHODS: Forty-six patients enrolled in a randomized clinical trial comparing two different dosing regimens of terbinafine completed a self-administered questionnaire at baseline and 1 month later. The questionnaire asked: (i) how much patients would be willing to pay for a theoretical treatment with a cure rate of 85% for their current onychomycosis (10 categories: $0-50, $51-100, to > $800); and (ii) annual income (10 categories: $0-10,000 to > $200,000).
RESULTS: Forty-four patients reported WTP at both visits, and 55% reported the same WTP. The quadratic-weighted (Fleiss-Cohen) kappa statistic indicated moderate agreement (kappa = 0.50, 95% confidence interval, CI 0.24-0.75, P < 0.01) as did the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient (r(s) = 0.57, P < 0.01; median difference = 0, P = 0.50). Strong agreement was shown among the 42 patients who reported income at both visits; 71% reported the same annual income category (kappa = 0.72, 95% CI 0.47-0.96, P < 0.01; r(s) = 0.68, P < 0.01; median difference = 0, P = 0.77). Age, disease severity and duration, previous therapy, self-reported annual income, and medication side-effects were not statistically associated with the reliability of WTP.
CONCLUSIONS: WTP and annual income demonstrated moderate and strong test-retest reliability, respectively. Self-reported WTP can serve as a reliable measure for future health economics research on onychomycosis.