Gains in Life Expectancy from Medical Interventions — Standardizing Data on Outcomes

The gain in life expectancy is an important outcome of many medical interventions. It can help patients and physicians decide whether the benefits of an intervention outweigh its harm or help an insurance company decide whether or not to cover a new medical procedure. It can help a pharmaceutical company decide whether a new drug is sufficiently more effective than the standard drugs to be worth marketing or help an expert panel designing guidelines for clinical practice sharpen its recommendations. Although there are well-developed criteria for assessing the quality of evidence of the effectiveness of a medical intervention (for example, . . .