Correlation Between Risk of Fall and Glaucomatous Visual Field Defects

Abstract

Purpose : To determine the correlation between risk of fall and glaucomatous visual field defects, both in severity and topography.

Methods : One hundred and eight patients, all diagnosed with Glaucoma and over 18 years old were enrolled. All recruited from the Glaucoma outpatient clinic of Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP/EPM). They had no other ophthalmologic comorbidities, besides previous phacoemulsification for more than 6 months. All patients had a thorough ophthalmologic examination and were already familiar with visual field. They performed at the same day: standard automatic perimetric 24-2 and answered the Fall Efficacy Scale International (FES-I) questionnaire, properly translated and validated to Brazilian Portuguese. The FES-I is a well-known and validated questionnaire that assesses the risk of fall in several other studies. After that, we proceeded to statistical analysis with STATA 13.0 software.

Results : The mean age of the patients was 61.47 ± 16.77 years. The mean score was 35.09 ± 10.56 points (normal value > 23). The worsening of risk of fall showed a correlation with perimetric defects (p=0.040), specially with central defects. Moreover, the risk of fall was significantly associated with worsening of MD in visual fields (p=0.032).

Conclusions : There is a correlation between the risk of fall assessed with FES-I and worse glaucomatous peripheric visual field defects. Furthermore, our results showed that the worse the risk of fall, the worse the MD of visual fields gets.

This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.