Abstract
Purpose :
Many people perceive vitreous floaters, but not everyone is bothered by them. It can be difficult for ophthalmologists to decide when to intervene or whether the treatment was successful. A properly developed patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) with disease-specific content can be helpful in providing information about the quality-of-life impact of floaters and determining the benefit of treatment. We explored the quality of life of patients with vitreous floaters in a qualitative study, with the intent to identify the content for a floaters-specific PROM.
Methods :
We followed the methods of the Eye-tem bank project. To develop the content of the questions (items), we performed in-depth telephone interviews with patients with floaters about their experienced quality of life, and identified all qualitative literature and PROMs previously used for vitreous floaters. Interviews were coded into quality-of-life domains and subdomains, using an earlier framework of quality of life in other ophthalmic diseases.
Results :
The initial item pool consisted of 912 items: 646 items generated from 34 patient interviews, 81 items from 20 floaters-specific PROMs, and 32 items from published qualitative literature. The 20 floaters-specific PROMs in the current literature only cover 13.2% of the 646 quality-of-life issues mentioned in the telephone interviews, as they mostly cover only symptoms and vision-related activity limitations. The item pool was reduced to a minimal set of items still sufficiently representative, and pre-tested with 10 patients. The new floaters-specific PROM contains 280 questions grouped in 11 conceptual domains: visual, ocular, and general symptoms; activity limitations; mobility issues; health concerns; economic impact; emotional and social wellbeing; inconveniences; and different coping strategies.
Conclusions :
Vitreous floaters result in unique quality-of-life issues that have not been adequately addressed in previous PROMs. Compared to quality-of-life issues found in other ophthalmic diseases, three things stood out: a) the effects of different lighting conditions, b) intermittent vision impairment caused by eye movements, and c) the importance of seeking understanding and support from healthcare providers.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.