Abstract
Purpose :
To assess the character and degree of concerns of glaucoma patients and to identify demographic/clinical factors affecting the concerns.
Methods :
We created a survey that addressed patients’ concerns on their general eyesight, visual symptoms, socioeconomic factors, activities and ocular symptoms. The survey was administered by two trained personnel to consecutive glaucoma patients in a tertiary referral practice. The severity of concern was scored with a scale of 0 to 5: not (0), slightly (1), somewhat (2), moderately (3), very (4), and extremely concerned (5). Age, gender, race, employment status (employed or not), best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) in the worse eye, mean deviation (MD) of the most recent visual field (VF) in the worse eye, and number of total glaucoma medications were recorded. To identify demographic/clinical factors affecting the concerns, mean severity score was compared among subgroups based on categorical variables and correlation analysis was performed between severity score and numerical variables.
Results :
Interview results of 100 glaucoma patients (mean VF MD, -17.56±10.24 dB; mean age, 68±15 years) were analyzed. Survey items, proportion of patients who answered ‘yes’ for each item, and degree of concern are described in Table. The two biggest concerns were blurry vision (33%) and difficulty seeing in dark light (20%) among visual symptoms, medical cost (29%) and getting help from others (13%) among socioeconomic factors, reading small print (33%) and driving (20%) among activities, and dryness (28%) and tearing (13%) among ocular symptoms. The severity of specific concern is greatest for visual symptoms (2.76/5.00), followed by socioeconomic factors (2.17/5.00), activities (2.14/5.00), and then ocular symptoms (1.62/5.00) (Table; p<0.001). The concern regarding visual symptoms was greater in patients with worse VF MD (p=0.002) or of African descent (p=0.029). The concern regarding socioeconomic factors was greater in younger (p=0.009) or employed (p=0.039) patients. The concern regarding activities was greater in patients with worse BCVA (p<0.001) or worse VF MD (p<0.001).
Conclusions :
Glaucoma patients are somewhat to moderately concerned especially about visual symptoms, followed by socioeconomic factors and activities. Specific concerns are associated with certain demographic/clinical factors. This information will be useful for better care of glaucoma patients.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.