Health care utilization was measured by the number of subjects that required hospitalization, nursing home stay, or home health services during the 2 years prior to the index HRS survey. Number of physician visits as well as out-of-pocket medical expenses over the duration of 2 years was also recorded. Subjects’ ability to perform tasks of daily living was assessed

within the two commonly recognized domains of ADLs and IADLs. ADLs include the following six activities: eating, dressing, bathing, toileting, getting in and out of bed, and mobility inside own residence. ADLs were considered impaired if the subject Y-27632 cell line reported difficulty performing or receiving help with any of the above six activities. IADLs include the following five activities: cooking, grocery shopping, taking medications, managing money, and using the telephone. IADLs were considered impaired if the subject reported difficulty

performing or receiving help with any of the above five activities. An informal caregiver was defined as a family member or unpaid relative with no organizational affiliation who provided in-home care to the respondent. Data recorded for the caregiver included sex and relationship to the respondent. The number of hours per week of informal caregiving was calculated using the average number of days per week and the average number of hours per day that the subject reported receiving informal care in the past month. The hours of caregiving were averaged across all subjects, including selleck products those who did not receive any caregiving. Demographic data included sex, age, race, ethnicity, living situation (married, unmarried living with others, unmarried living alone), presence of children who live within 10 miles, years of education, insurance other than Medicare/Medicaid, and household net worth. The annual cost of informal caregiving can be estimated using opportunity cost, which accounts for the cost of hours sacrificed by the informal caregiver in order to care for a patient by applying a market

wage rate to caregiving activities.19, 20 Opportunity cost can be estimated using the wage of an equivalent service, such as that of a home health aide. The yearly opportunity MCE公司 cost of informal caregiving for individuals with cirrhosis was estimated by multiplying the median hourly national wage for a home health aide (US $9.85)21 × the weekly hours of informal caregiving × 52 (weeks per year). Upper and lower bound cost estimates for informal caregiving were created using 10th and 90th percentile hourly wage for a home health aide, respectively (10th percentile: US $7.67; 90th percentile: US $14.13). Cost estimates were averaged across all subjects, including those who did not receive any caregiving. Descriptive bivariate statistics were analyzed using chi-squared and F-tests for categorical and continuous variables, respectively.