Abstract
Purpose: :
To assess vision-related quality of life in children with congenital glaucoma, using the recently developed Children’s Visual Function Questionnaire (CVFQ).
Methods: :
CVFQ (www.retinafoundation.org) has two presentations, one for children under 3 years of age and other for older children, and is divided in six subscales - general health; general vision; competence; personality; family impact and treatment. From those, a composite score can also be calculated. The CVFQ was applied to parents or other caretakers of congenital glaucoma patients at Glaucoma Service - Federal University of Uberlândia (Uberlândia - Minas Gerais - Brazil) by personal interview. Parents or caretakers of normal children were also interviewed in order to be used as control group. The subscale scores were compared for control group versus congenital glaucoma group. The "total" score was computed by taking the average of the subscale scores. For statistical analysis, t-tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed.
Results: :
Thirty children participate of the study, 14 with congenital glaucoma (5 female x 9 male) and 16 without disease (control group - 7 female x 9 male). The mean age of participants were 5.8 ± 2.3 years old for glaucoma group and 6.0 ± 2.6 years old for control group (p=0.8162). Among the control group, all 16 patients presented normal vision. Between the 14 patients with congenital glaucoma, 6 had severe visual impairment, 5 had mild visual impairment, and 3 had low visual impairment. Congenital glaucoma scores were lower than those from the control group for all subscales (p<0.0018), except for general health (p=0.6902). The more pronounced difference observed between the subscales scores was found in the family impact (39.6 ± 23.4 for congenital glaucoma x 93.1 ± 6.1 for control group - p<0.00001). The "total" score obtained was 65.6 ± 11.4 for glaucoma group versus 91.2 ± 4.2 for control group (p<0.00001). Competence subscale in the experimental group was significantly lower in comparison with visual impairment severity (p=0.0083).
Conclusions: :
Congenital glaucoma influences vision-related quality of life of children as confirmed by low scores in almost all subscales assessed by the CVFQ with emphasis on the family impact. This instrument should be incorporated in the clinical assessment of children with congenital glaucoma as a measure of the impact of visual impairment in their quality of life.
Keywords: quality of life • intraocular pressure • vision and action