Abstract
Purpose: :
To assess vision-related quality of life and self-rated health before and 12 months after cataract surgery in patients aged 65+ years who had undergone phaco-emulsification cataract surgery at Westmead Hospital, Sydney, during a 2-year period to June 2007.
Methods: :
Over the period, 2000 cataract surgical patients were recruited and followed post-operatively. LogMAR visual acuity (VA), self-rated health (using the SF-36 questionnaire) and visual function (using the VF-14 questionnaire) were assessed before and after surgery. Effect sizes were calculated by dividing the difference in mean scores at the two time points by the standard deviation before surgery, and categorised as small if <0.2, moderate if 0.2-0.8 and large if >0.8.
Results: :
Of the 2000 patients recruited, 640 patients to date have been followed for 12 months post-operatively, with completed questionnaires. Mean age was 74.4±5.9 years and 55.8% were female. The overall VF-14 scores were significantly improved after cataract surgery (t = 13.13, P <0.0001), and this was independent of age and sex. The overall effect size was moderate (0.48). Improvement was observed across all tasks: the largest effect sizes were seen for reading small print, close work, watching television and driving. The smallest effects were seen for cooking, recognising faces and reading large print. 74.6% of the patients had improved VA, of whom 20.6% improved by one line, 18.9% by two lines and 35.1% by three or more lines. 70% of patients had improved visual function according to VF-14 scores. There was no change in self-rated health, however, 12 months after compared to before cataract surgery. This was associated with a high co-morbidity of diabetes, hypertension, related retinopathy and macular degeneration. Individual analyses by age and sex also showed no significant change. Effect sizes for all individual subgroups were not significant.
Conclusions: :
As expected, there was a significant improvement in both VA and visual function following cataract surgery, which persisted for 12 months. Self-rated health did not significantly change 12 months following surgery.
Keywords: quality of life • visual acuity