Abstract
Purpose:
To determine the impact of severity of diabetic retinopathy (DR), visual acuity and diabetes related stress on vision related quality of life in patients with diabetic retinopathy.
Methods:
372 men and women with T2D were stratified by severity of DR into no retinopathy and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). Each subject underwent tests of diabetes related distress (PAID), vision-related quality of life (NEI-VFQ25), best corrected visual acuity (BCVA)[logMAR], ophthalmic and physical examination. Bivariate analysis between categories of DR; linear regression was conducted for the NEI-VFQ-25 by DR severity adjusting for age, gender, HbA1c and PAID were conducted using SPSS v17.
Results:
The mean NEI-VFQ-25 for the PDR group was significantly lower when compared to the group with no retinopathy, 86.2±10.7 vs. 75.8±20.4, p=<0.001, where lower score=decreased vision-related quality of life. BCVA (0.09±0.13 vs. 0.19±0.21, p< 0.001) and HbA1c (8.0±1.8 vs. 8.7±2.0, p=0.007) were also significantly different between the two groups of retinopathy. PAID was not significant between the groups. NEI-VFQ-25 was inversely correlated to logMAR BCVA (r=-0.052, p<0.001) and PAID (r=-0.219, p<0.001). Gender differences were found for NEI-VFQ-25 by DR severity; men showed significantly higher NEI-VFQ-25 scores when compared to women (no retinopathy: 88.8±9.5 vs. 88.3±11.3, p=0.002 and PDR: 79.4±19.7 vs. 71.4±20.4, p=0.030). On full adjustment of the model, NEI-VFQ-25 was significantly associated with severity of retinopathy (no retinopathy: 84.3±1.1 vs. PDR: 79.0±191.2, p<0.001) with BCVA accounting for 20% of the variance in the model.
Conclusions:
NEI-VFQ-25 is independently associated with severity of DR and visual acuity only accounts for 20% of the variance.
Keywords: 499 diabetic retinopathy •
669 quality of life •
464 clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: risk factor assessment