Evidence of quality of life for hospitalised patients with COVID-19: a scoping review

Abstract

Background Information on the quality of life of people hospitalised with COVID-19 is important, both in assessing the burden of disease and the cost-effectiveness of treatments. However, there were potential barriers to collecting such evidence. Objective To review the existing evidence on quality of life for people hospitalised with COVID-19, with a focus on the amount of evidence available and methods used. Design A scoping review with systematic searches. Results A total of 35 papers were selected for data extraction. The most common study type was economic evaluation (N = 13), followed by cross-sectional (N = 10). All economic evaluations used published utility values for other conditions to represent COVID-19 inpatients’ quality of life. The most popular quality-of-life survey measure was the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (N = 8). There were 12 studies that used a mental health-related survey and 12 that used a sleep-related survey. Five studies used EQ-5D, but only one collected responses from people in the acute phase of COVID-19. Studies reported a negative impact on quality of life for people hospitalised with COVID-19, although many studies did not include a formal comparison group. Limitations Although it used systematic searches, this was not a full systematic review. Conclusion Quality-of-life data were collected from people hospitalised with COVID-19 from relatively early in the pandemic. However, there was a lack of consensus as to what survey measures to use, and few studies used generic health measures. Economic evaluations for COVID-19 treatments did not use utilities collected from people with COVID-19. In future health crises, researchers should be vigilant for opportunities to collect quality-of-life data from hospitalised patients but should try to co-ordinate as well as ensuring generic health measures are used more. Funding This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme as award number NIHR132254. Plain language summary Quality of life can be measured using short, simple surveys. It is important to assess quality of life in this way, as it can show how health conditions affect people. Quality-of-life surveys can also be used to measure how treatments benefit people and to judge whether it is cost-effective to fund them. COVID-19 is a new disease, with new treatments developed to treat it. COVID-19 also created possible barriers to collecting quality-of-life survey data, especially from people in hospital at the start of the pandemic. This paper reviews studies which report data on quality of life for people hospitalised with COVID-19, especially how much evidence is available and how the studies were carried out. There were 35 studies included in the review. Of these, 13 assessed how cost-effective treatments for COVID-19 were. None of them collected survey responses directly from patients. Instead, they used data previously collected from people with other conditions such as influenza to represent people with COVID-19’s quality of life. The studies which did collect data from patients used a wide variety of different surveys, which made comparing their results difficult. Mental health-related surveys were used by 12 studies, and a further 12 used sleep-related surveys. Relatively few studies used general surveys which could assess the overall effect of COVID-19 on people’s quality of life. In future health crises, we recommend using more general quality-of-life measures. We also recommend that researchers co-ordinate to reduce the number of different surveys they use, as this will make comparing results easier.

Keywords

• covid-19
• quality of life
• scoping review
• hospitalisation