Healthy-days time equivalents for outcomes of acute rotavirus infections.

Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe gastroenteritis in infants and young children worldwide. Health-state utility measures used in economic evaluations of rotavirus vaccines do not reflect differences between mild and severe symptoms of rotavirus gastroenteritis and, therefore, do not adequately capture preferences for non-fatal outcomes associated with rotavirus common in industrialized countries. This paper describes the development and results of a survey specifically designed to develop quality-adjusted time equivalents for rotavirus gastroenteritis among a sample of parents with young children in the United States as an alternative to conventional QALY measures in assessing cost-effectiveness.