Abstract
Purpose :
Marital status has been associated with health conditions and mortality. We tested whether marital status is associated with visual field (VF) loss and worsening in glaucoma in addition to other demographics including age, sex, race, ethnicity, and language ability.
Methods :
We selected reliable SITA Standard 24-2 VFs from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Glaucoma Service. First, we performed multivariable linear regression analyses to test if and how marital status is cross-sectionally associated with global and regional VF loss measured by mean deviation (MD) and pointwise total deviation (TD) values, respectively. Second, we used multivariable linear regression to longitudinally associate marital status with global and regional VF worsening measured by MD slope and pointwise TD slope, respectively. The cross-sectional analyses were adjusted for age, sex, race, ethnicity, and language ability with the longitudinal analyses further adjusted for baseline MD. The first VF per eye and the eye with worse MD were used for the cross-sectional analyses and the eye with worse baseline MD was used for the longitudinal analyses. Results for TD locations with p values ≥ 0.05 were reset to zero for visualization.
Results :
We included 55,186 reliable 24-2 VFs from 55,186 glaucoma patients (MD: -5.2 ± 6.4 dB; age: 56.5 ± 17.9 years; sex: female: 58.1%; race: White: 71.5%, Asian: 6.2%, African American: 10.8%, and other or unknown: 11.5%; ethnicity: Hispanic: 7.1%, non-Hispanics: 85.3%, and unknown: 7.6%; language ability: English speakers: 88.7%, Spanish speakers: 4.0%, other languages speakers: 4.5%, and unknown: 2.8%; marital status: marriage/partnered: 55.0%, single: 29.4%, divorce: 6.9%, legally separated: 1.1%, and widowed: 7.6%) for cross-sectional analyses and 8,028 eyes from 8,028 patients with at least 5 reliable 24-2 VFs over 4 years for longitudinal analyses. Widowed, separated, single, and divorced patients had worse MDs of 1.5, 0.8, 0.8 and 0.4 dB than married/partnered (p < 0.002) and worse TDs up to 1.8, 1.5, 1.2 and 0.8 dB (p < 0.001). Widowed patients had worse MD slopes of 0.06 dB/year (p = 0.001) than married/partnered and worse TD slopes up to 0.12 dB/year (p < 0.001). Single patients had worse TD slopes up to 0.06 dB/year (p < 0.001).
Conclusions :
Widowed, separated and single patients had worse VF loss than married/partnered and widowed patients had faster VF worsening.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.