Abstract
Purpose:
There is minimal research in Vietnam which has examined the impact of first and second eye cataract surgery on falls despite an ageing population.
Methods:
A longitudinal prospective cohort study was conducted on patients with bilateral cataract who were scheduled for surgery at the Eye Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam between July 2011 to July 2013. Information was collected at three time point: a week prior to their first cataract surgery (baseline), one to three months after their first eye or both eye cataract surgery and one year after each person’s first eye cataract surgery. The outcome of interest was a fall which was defined as “an event which results in a person coming to rest inadvertently on the ground or floor or other lower level”. Three objective measures of vision were administered by the researcher at baseline and the second assessment. Visual measures examined included visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and stereopsis. A multilevel longitudinal Poisson model was undertaken to examine the change in the number of falls over the study period.
Results:
The final sample at baseline was 413 patients. Two hundred and forty seven participants were interviewed at the second assessment resulting in the lost to follow-up of 40.2%. A total of 312 participants participated in a phone interview one year after first or both eye cataract surgery. The prevalence of falls was 12.8% (n=53/413) at baseline, 1.6% (n=4/247) at one to three months after first or both eye cataract surgery, and 7.1% (n=22/312) at twelve months. The results found that binocular contrast sensitivity, gender, and a previous history of a fall were associated with a decrease in the number of falls after cataract surgery.
Conclusions:
The study provides preliminary evidence that first and second eye cataract surgery reduces the number of falls in an older Vietnamese population.
Keywords: 413 aging •
445 cataract