Abstract
Purpose :
A complete understanding of the psychosocial benefits strabismus surgery offers besides functional and cosmetic correction has yet to be fully determined. We performed a questionnaire based prospective study to evaluate the effect strabismus surgery had on private self-consciousness, public self-consciousness and social anxiety using the self-consciousness scale (SCS) developed by Scheier & Carver in 1985.
Methods :
95 English speaking adult patients who were candidates for surgical correction of strabismus elected to participate in this study. Patients were eligible to participate if they were age >18 years old and able to read and complete the study questionnaires. Patients’ completed a demographics and a self-consciousness scale form both pre- and post-operatively. The self-consciousness scale was rated on a Likert-type rating scale ranging from 0 to 3 (e.g. 0 = ”not at all like me”, 3 = ”a lot like me”). The total and subscale (private self-consciousness, public self-consciousness, and social anxiety) summative scores were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test with statistically significant relationships defined as p<0.05.
Results :
Preliminary data indicated an overall improvement post-operatively in total scores (-2.517 p=0.012), public self-consciousness scores (-2.628, p=0.009,) and social anxiety (-2.202, p=0.028). While improvement in scores was noted in private self-consciousness scores (-1.136 p=0.188), significance was not achieved for this subscale.
Conclusions :
This study suggests that beyond functional and cosmetic improvements, strabismus surgery can result in a statistically significant improvement in measures of public self-consciousness and social anxiety.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.