Health-Related Quality of Life in Monocular Patients: Long-Term Sequelae with Loss of an Eye

Abstract

Abstract: : Purpose: This study was conducted in order to measure long-term differences in the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of patients after the loss of an eye using both general health and vision specific instruments. Methods: We administered the SF-12 and the NEI-VFQ 39 HRQOL surveys to 30 patients in an ocular prosthetics clinic and to 24 accompanying persons. The patient group had a mean age of 50 years (range 19 to 76). The control group had a mean age of 49 years (range 18 to 76). The mean time after loss of an eye was 23 years (range 0.5 to 59.5). Results: Three of the twelve subscale scores generated by the vision specific VFQ-39 demonstrated statistically significant differences between the patient and control group: peripheral vision (P=0.0006), role difficulties (P=0.015) and driving (P=0.049), as did the composite score (P=0.014). The SF-12 mental and physical health summary scores and the general health measures of the VFQ-39 showed no significant difference in the quality of life between the groups. Conclusions: The patients report difficulty with driving, presumably strongly related to the loss of peripheral visual field while only one subject actually terminated driving for reasons related to their vision. Role difficulties were reported due to either accomplishing less or by being limited at length of participation in work or other activities. The absence of differences between the two group’s general physical and mental health related scores suggests that despite the patients’ previous trauma of losing an eye, they are in good general physical and mental health. This study is consistent with other work demonstrating patients’ ability to eventually adjust well to monocular life.

Keywords: quality of life