Abstract
Purpose: :
To determine whether a difference in vision–related quality of life exists in randomly selected American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations aged 40 years or older who have visual impairment as compared with those AI/AN who have no visual impairment.
Methods: :
We randomly selected American Indian/Alaska Natives 40 years of age and older from the Pacific Northwest. We included the National Eye Institute–Visual Function Questionnaire–25 (NEI–VFQ–25) and measured presenting visual acuity with Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) charts and/or Snellen visual acuity measurements. We compared the NEI–VFQ–25 overall and selected subscale scores in those participants with visual impairment, defined as 20/40 or worse in the better eye, to those participants who have no visual impairment. We used a Mann–Whitney U test to determine statistical significance.
Results: :
We included 331 participants. The overall composite NEI–VFQ–25 score was 84.48 (+/– 13.81). Overall scores were 77.44 (+/– 20.45) for near activities and 85.39 (+/– 18.35) for distance activities. Those with visual impairment had a mean near activities subset score of 74.58 (+/– 22.06), while those with no impairment had a mean score of 79. 27 (+/– 18.73). For the distance activities subset, those AI/AN with visual impairment had a mean score of 75.97 (+/– 23.81), while those with no impairment had a mean score of 87.74 (+/– 15.24). For the composite score, those with visual impairment had a mean score of 78.68 (+/– 11.30) while those with no impairment had a mean score of 86.14 (+/– 23.81). We determined that AI/AN who had visual impairment scored significantly lower than those with no impairment in each of the three categories of interest: near activities (p=.011), distance activities (p=.000) and composite (p=.001).
Conclusions: :
The NEI–VFQ–25 detected vision–related loss of quality of life in AI/AN participants with visual impairment in both distance activities and near activities, and in the overall composite score.
Keywords: quality of life • visual acuity