Abstract
Purpose:
To examine the relationship between diabetes related distress measured using Problem Areas in Diabetes (PAID) questionnaire and vision related quality of life using NEI-VFQ-25 in people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) with varying severity of diabetic retinopathy (DR)
Methods:
381 men and women with T2D were stratified by severity of DR into no retinopathy and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), and by presence of maculopathy into presence or absence of clinically significant macular oedema (CSMO). Each subject completed PAID and NEI-VFQ25 questionnaires, and best corrected visual acuity (BCVA)[logMAR], and grading of DR were recorded. Bivariate analysis between categories of DR was done for both PAID and NEI-VFQ-25. Linear regression was conducted for the PAID adjusting for age, gender, HbA1c, method of diabetes treatment, body mass index, diastolic blood pressure and NEI-VFQ-25 using SPSS v21.
Results:
Neither retinopathy nor maculopathy status influenced PAID scores. NEI-VFQ-25 composite score was significantly decreased in patients with PDR compared to no retinopathy (p<0.001), whilst only the mental health and driving subscales were decreased in the CSMO group (p=0.030 and p=0.016) respectively. On full adjustment of the model, NEI-VFQ-25 composite score was not found to be a predictor of PAID. However, only the subscales of NEI-VFQ-25, general health and mental health were found to be predictive and accounted for 13.2% of the variance in the model.
Conclusions:
Conclusion : The small correlation between the PAID and the NEI-VFQ25 suggests that a patient’s vision is not related to the level to which they perceive their diabetes as problematic. PAID and the NEI-VFQ25 measure similar but different aspects of psychological morbidity. Therefore, PAID should be used in conjunction with NEI-VFQ-25 to measure the entirety of diabetes disease related distress.