[The impact of hip fracture on patients' quality of life (QOL) with emphasis on cost utility analysis].

Hip fracture is associated with compromised patients'quality of life (QOL). Cost utility analysis (CUA) is one of the important applications of QOL evaluation. Cost per QALY (quality adjusted life years; life years multiplied by utility) is the major outcome in CUA. Utility can be measured with several ways. Standard gamble (SG) and time trade off (TTO) are considered to be the standard methods. They are, however, too cumbersome in clinical practice or study. Thus preference-based type of QOL questionnaires are often used for obtaining utility values. Since QOL is dependent on the cultural background of the society, the database for utility values associated with each disease states must be established in Japan. Future studies to build up such database are of utmost importance.