Abstract
Purpose :
Our aim was to assess vision-related activity difficulties (visual ability) among patients with neovascular AMD using a Swedish version of the Massof Activity Inventory (MAI).
Methods :
Participants were diagnosed with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and receiving treatment for the disease in a hospital in Sweden. Participants completed the Swedish version of the MAI questionnaire, best corrected distance and near visual acuity (VA) were measured. MAI is formed of 50 goals (items) and can be used to measure the overall or specific visual ability in 4 functional domains: reading, mobility, visual motor function, and visual information processing. Charlson comorbidity index weighted by age was computed.
Results :
There was a total of 196 participants (mean age=78.5 years, SD=7.67, 66% female), 67 with vision impairment defined as distance VA in the better eye 0.32 logMAR or worse. Among the visually impaired, median VA was 0.53 logMAR (IQR=0.22). The median Charlson comorbidity index weighted by age was 4, range 0 to 15. After excluding participants with VA better than 0.32 logMAR, 12 items were excluded from the final Rasch analysis due to poor fitting. The mean visual ability for the visually impaired participants was 1.64 logits (SD= 1.55). The most difficult item was "sew and needlework" and the less difficult was "eat meals", items removed included, for example, "fishing" or "do electrical work". Visual ability was correlated with distance VA (p=0.043), near VA (p=0.01) and Charlson comorbidity index (p=0.026).
Conclusions :
The current results revealed that the MAI produces reliable measures of visual ability among patients with nAMD and can be used for vision rehabilitation outcomes. Some items in the Swedish version of the MAI seem redundant for patients with nAMD. Shorter instruments are always preferrable, and we will investigate further the possibility of an item reduction for this target group.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.