Determining the value of hand surgery through mapping algorithms

Journal article

Introduction: Health state utility values describe the desirability of health states and are needed to calculate quality-adjusted life years. Traditionally, they are derived using generic measures such as the EuroQol 5-Dimension scale. No hand-specific measures can be used to derive them. This study aimed to develop and evaluate mapping algorithms to estimate the EuroQol 5-Dimension utility index from the Patient Evaluation Measure.

Methods: Matched Patient Evaluation Measures and EuroQol 5-Dimension 5-Level data from 2043 patients were used to develop mapping algorithms. Transfer-to-utility models were developed and assessed through a 1000-fold bootstrap validation.

Results: We present a range of mapping algorithms to derive health state utility values from the Patient Evaluation Measure, a commonly used hand-specific Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM). The population-level prediction error of our best performing models was clinically relevant.

Conclusions: This suggests that mapping hand-specific PROMs on to generic preference-based measures may not be appropriate.

Level of evidence: II

Authors: Geoghegan, L; Harrison, CJ; Hettiaratchy, S; Rodrigues, JN

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Journal: Journal of Hand Surgery (European Volume)
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 604-610
• Publication date: 2026-02-11
• Acceptance date: 2025-12-04
• DOI: 10.1177/17531934251408719
• EISSN: 2043-6289
• ISSN: 1753-1934
• Pmid: 41673998
• Language: English