Estimating the severity distribution of disease in South Korea using EQ-5D-3L: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: There is a paucity of data on the distribution of disease severity. In this study, we estimated disease severity distributions in South Korea using two EQ-5D-3L population surveys. METHODS: A total of 110 health states for 35 diseases with 2–5 severity levels (e.g., mild, moderate, severe) were included in this study. A general population of 360 participants from the areas surrounding Seoul and Gyunggi evaluated these health states using EQ-5D-3L via face-to-face interviews and a paper questionnaire. The EQ-5D indices were used to measure the severity levels of health states and used as the cutoff points for the disease severity distributions. Finally, these cutoff points were applied to disease prevalence data with EQ-5D-3L, which were obtained from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHNES) and Korean Community Health Survey, in order to estimate the disease severity distributions. RESULTS: The severity distributions of 8 diseases were estimated, including asthma, angina, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, major depressive disorder, musculoskeletal problems in the legs, anemia, and allergic rhinitis and conjunctivitis. For example, the EQ-5D indices for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease severity were 0.929, 0.742, and 0.620, and the cut-off points were 0.835 (between mild and moderate) and 0.681 (between moderate and severe). Using these cutoff points, the distributions of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease severity were 66.5 % (mild), 23.3 % (moderate), and 10.1 % (severe) according to KNHNES. CONCLUSIONS: The estimated severity distributions in this study can be used as a valid calculation of the disease burden in the general population. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-2904-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.