Abstract
Purpose :
Most patients, especially the elderly, struggle instilling eye drops. The most described issues associated with ocular instillation are difficulties to target the eye, to administer a single well-calibrated drop, to pinch the bottle correctly while reclining the head and rising the arm above the head. Moreover, the instillation procedure is associated with a risk of touching and hurting the cornea. The goal of the present study is to evaluate the usability and patients’ satisfaction for an innovative eye drop delivery device designed to resolve the instillation issues of the traditional eye drop delivery droppers, as well as their acceptability to perform a new therapeutic gesture for the application of their eye drops.
Methods :
We enrolled 16 patients and presented them a new ocular delivery device alongside with the use instruction. Following a 2-min demonstration on the correct use of the new device, the patients were asked to read the use instruction and test the device. A questionnaire and a 5-point Likert scale survey evaluated their understanding of the use instructions, and their appreciation of the new therapeutic gesture. Patients’ feedback on the strength/weakness, advantages over the traditional eye drop delivery droppers was also recorded.
Results :
15 of 16 (93.8%) patients would prefer the new upright delivery device over the traditional eye droppers. The new therapeutic gesture was rated as easy to perform with the new device being very easy (75.0%), easy (18.8%) to use for 15 of 16 patients. For 12 of 16 (75.1%) patients the new device cannot induce misuse mistakes, while only three patients (18.8%), and one (6.3%) were of an opposite or had no opinion, respectively. The patients were particularly satisfied that the risk of product spillage is also reduced with this new ocular drug delivery device, and that the risk of touching the cornea is greatly reduced.
Conclusions :
This usability test demonstrated that this patient-centric-designed delivery device was easy to use, and its associated new therapeutic gesture was well accepted. This new device improves patients’ accuracy and ability to correctly deliver the right dose of treatment while reducing product spillage. By improving patients’ ocular administration experience and satisfaction, resulting in an improved treatment compliance, this new device has the potential to better protect patients’ vision and improve their quality-of-life.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.