Abstract
Purpose :
Patients’ perspectives on their disease can significantly affect the disease course and outcome. However, limited data are available on patients’ perceptions of their dry eye disease (DED). It also remains unknown whether patient’s language plays any role in such perceptions. This study aims to compare patients’ perception of DED and the effectiveness of its treatment between Spanish- and English-speaking patients.
Methods :
This cross-sectional study included 62 patients with DED in San Antonio, Texas. All patients completed a questionnaire to evaluate their perspectives on their DED including their satisfaction with understanding DED, their opinion on easiness of following doctors' advice, their opinion on the effectiveness of the treatment, their satisfaction with the eye care, and their general outlook on DED. English version was used for English-speaking patients, and Spanish version was used for Spanish-speaking patients. All patients also had a comprehensive ocular surface examination as well as Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) questionnaire. We then compared the patients’ perspectives on DED between English- and Spanish-speaking patients.
Results :
There were 44 women and 18 men, with an average age of 60.8±13.8 years (range, 27-87 year). There were 18 Spanish-speaking patients and 44 English or bilingual speaking patients. The average OSDI score was 53.4±19.7. Among all, 57% were satisfied with their understanding of DED, 81% found it easy to follow their doctors' advice for DED management, 61% thought that the DED treatment had been helpful, 69% were satisfied with their eye care for DED, and 61% expressed optimism regarding the long-term prospects of their DED. Comparisons between Spanish- and English-speaking patients did not yield significant demographic or clinical differences. However, Spanish-only speaking patients reported a lower understanding of DED compared to English-speaking patients (33.3% vs 65.9%, respectively, P=0.006). There were no significant differences in other DED perspectives between these two groups.
Conclusions :
Our data suggests patients speaking only Spanish experience a gap in understanding of their DED. By understanding the ethnic differences in patients’ perceptions of their DED, proper measures can be implemented to help guide treatment of this common condition.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.