The impact of glaucoma on the quality of life of patients in Norway

Abstract

ABSTRACT.Purpose: To elucidate the relationship between the visual difficulties reported by patients treated for glaucoma and their objective functional damage, and to evaluate the reliability of the patient responses. Methods: Questionnaires concerning quality of life filled in at home by 589 patients treated for chronic open angle glaucoma were correlated to corresponding questionnaires returned from their ophthalmologists. Results: Few of our patients had a visual field damage judged to be of functional significance. There was a weak to moderate association between both visual field defects and decreased visual acuity and self-reported visual difficulties. A high proportion of the patients had normal binocular visual field and a stable disease, raising the suspicion that some of them were treated for ocular hypertension. The agreement between the responses from the patients and the ophthalmologists concerning the topical treatment was good, regarding treatment duration and other diseases of the patients the agreement was moderate. Conclusion:The association between subjective visual disability and presence of visual field defects was weak to moderate in our patients treated for glaucoma, and this association was further weakened by adjusting for visual acuity. Some patients might be treated unnecessarily, and a favourable prognosis might be given to most of them. The reliability of the patients in general was good.Key words: glaucoma -quality of life -visual field defect -visual acuity -questionnaire -reliability.

Quality of Life in Patients with Glaucoma Who Live in a Developing Country

“…Our study showed that glaucoma patients have different health-related QoL perception than a normal non-glaucomatous population and concurs with the results reported in the literature [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. In five out of eight categories of the SF-36 survey, glaucomatous patients scored less than the control group.…”

“…Reports of cross-sectional assessments of QoL in glaucomatous patients in the United States, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, Italy and Japan have shown a relative decrease in the functional status and lower healthrelated QoL as compared to non-glaucomatous patients [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The Collaborative Initial Glaucoma Treatment Study is conducting an longitudinal study to assess the health-related QoL implications of glaucoma treatment [2,12].…”

Identifying Content for the Glaucoma-specific Item Bank to Measure Quality-of-life Parameters

“…7 Over the years, several glaucoma-specific patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments have been developed. [3][4][5][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] While these instruments measure various QOL domains such as activity limitation, symptoms, convenience of eye-drop use, treatment of side effects and satisfaction; each instrument typically measures only one domain. 7,24 For instance, the Glaucoma Quality of Life (GQL-15) measures only activity limitation, 3,25 the Treatment Satisfaction Survey of Intra-ocular Pressure (TSS-IOP) was developed to assess treatment satisfaction and side effects of glaucoma medication, 13 and the Comparison of Ophthalmic Medication for Tolerability (COMTOL) measures tolerability and compliance of glaucoma eyedrops.…”

Impact of Adverse Drug Reactions of Topical Anti-Glaucoma Medications on the Vision-Related Quality of Life in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma

“…Several previous studies 4,13,14 have reported visual acuity loss and advanced field loss as the main causes associated with lower vQOL in POAG. However, according to Odberg et al, 15,16 QOL impairment occurs much earlier; at the time of diagnosis. We could not do a subgroup analysis based on the staging of the disease as our survey based data did not include the clinical staging of glaucoma.…”