Health utility book: A systematic review and meta-analysis of health utilities in gastric cancer.

Purpose: The treatment landscape in gastric cancer has changed drastically over the last 15 years with surgical advancements and the introduction of new therapeutic agents and combinations. Despite the potential for improved survival, these new interventions can impact health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Our objective was to identify and synthesize health utility data for gastric cancer patients as part of the Health Utility Book (HUB) project.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, EconLit, and CINAHL from inception to March 2023 for original studies that reported health utility data for gastric cancer. Records were screened independently and in duplicate by two reviewers. Data on study design, patient characteristics, and health utilities were extracted using a standardized form. A random effects meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize health utilities by cancer stage. Heterogeneity was evaluated using the I² statistic.

Results: 600 health utilities from 3,405 respondents were identified across 19 studies. All studies were published between 2018 and 2022 and most were conducted in Asia (n = 12, 63.2%). The EQ-5D was the most common method of preference elicitation (n = 17, 89.5%), and health utilities ranged from 0.298 (SD 0.088) to 0.920 (SD 0.130). Mean health utilities from random effects models were 0.82 (95% Confidence Interval [CI] 0.76-0.88), 0.76 (95% CI 0.68-0.85), and 0.67 (95% CI 0.46-0.87) for early stage, advanced stage, and metastatic gastric cancer, respectively.

Conclusion: This systematic review provides a reference set of health utilities for gastric cancer, which can help understand HRQoL and facilitate the retrieval and selection of health utilities for economic evaluations.