Review outlines methods to estimate life expectancy

Five key methods have been explored by Leicester researchers to calculate life expectancy and the life years lost due to disease and illness.

Life expectancy measures, particularly years of life lost or gained, have captured a great interest in the last years by public health institutions and healthcare professionals given their immediate and actionable interpretation.

Academics from the University of Leicester investigated the common methods used to predict the ‘years of life lost’ by reviewing a range of methods: from basic methods — such as life tables — to most recent and advanced methods using statistical modelling.

They highlighted the important differences between the methods, current software used, and how they can be implemented in healthcare research and real-world settings using an example from a clinically-relevant topic of multimorbidity in the UK Biobank.

According to the findings, the review found that using the same data and research question, the estimated years of life lost value differed among methods, as each method focused on estimating different quantities.

The research was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) East Midlands.

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