When judging a population’s health to determine disability-adjusted life years, disability weight is a tool for measuring the severity of disability caused by a disease. However, previous studies have pointed out that surveys targeting ordinary citizens produce unclear disability weight values. Therefore, in an attempt to obtain clearer estimations, we conduct a paper-based questionnaire survey of medical professionals – nurses with over ten years of experience – believed to have extensive knowledge of diseases and experience in patient care. We find that disability weight estimations based on the survey of medical professionals presents higher values than those based on a survey of ordinary citizens using the same estimation approach, especially for non-terminal-stage diseases. This suggests that medical-professionals-based surveys may correct the underestimated disability weights of non-terminal diseases (e.g., early stage of cancers and mellitus) found through ordinary-citizens-based surveys. Moreover, we illustrate that depressive disorder and early-stage cancers have almost the same health loss since their disability weights are similar.

在判断人群的健康状况以决定伤残调整生命年时，伤残权重是衡量疾病引起的伤残严重程度的工具。但是，先前的研究指出，针对普通公民的调查产生的残障权重值不清楚。因此，为了获得更清晰的估计，我们对有十多年经验的医学专业人员进行了纸质问卷调查，这些专业人员被认为具有丰富的疾病知识和患者护理经验。我们发现，基于医学专业人员调查的残障权重估计值比基于使用相同估计方法的普通公民调查的残差权重估计值更高，尤其是对于非晚期疾病。这表明基于医学专业人士的调查可能会纠正通过基于普通公民的调查发现的非晚期疾病（例如，癌症和癌症的早期阶段）被低估的残疾权重。此外，我们证明了抑郁症和早期癌症的健康损失几乎相同，因为它们的残疾体重相似。