Abstract:
Age related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness for Americans over 55 years of age. One of the goals of the AAO is to promote awareness of AMD in diverse communities throughout America. However, there are no data about the level of understanding of AMD in the Asian American population. We devised a questionnaire (QN) to assess the level of knowledge of AMD in an Asian American community and suburban Caucasian community. Participants were given a QN of 10 questions in senior centers and physician offices in San Francisco, CA and Yonkers, NY. The questions asked about their knowledge of AMD, information about blindness and AMD, treatment options, diagnostic testing, frequency of visits to an eye physician, and family history. 198 QN were analyzed: 121 F, 77 M; Mean age=65.6 yrs (sd= 12.5). 60.6% of patients reported that they had seen an eye physician in the previous 2 years. We separated the Asian responders (AQ) from the Caucasian responders (CQ) and created 48 age matched pairs for comparison. More CQ than AQ were aware of AMD (p<0.0001), treatment of AMD (p<0.0022), blindness and AMD (p<0.0001), and a simple test for AMD (p<0.0001). More CQ than AQ were told by an eye MD of AMD (p<0.0001).
Although a significant proportion of Asian American patients in our study had seen an eye physician, a small minority of patients were aware of AMD and the ability to test for its presence, compared to Caucasian patients. These preliminary data suggest that the Asian American population should be targeted by future AMD health education initiatives.
Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: health care delivery/economics/manpower • aging