Visual impairment, visual functioning, and quality of life assessments in patients with glaucoma.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the relation between visual impairment, visual functioning, and the global quality of life in patients with glaucoma.


METHODS
Visual impairment, defined with the American Medical Association Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment; visual functioning, measured with the VF-14 and the Field Test Version of the National Eye Institute-Visual Functioning Questionnaire (NEI-VFQ); and the global quality of life, assessed with the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), were determined in 147 consecutive patients with glaucoma.


RESULTS
None of the SF-36 domains demonstrated more than a weak correlation with visual impairment. The VF-14 scores were moderately correlated with visual impairment. Of the twelve NEI-VFQ scales, distance activities and vision specific dependency were moderately correlated with visual impairment. Of the twelve NEI-VFQ scales, distance activities and vision specific dependency were moderately correlated with visual field impairment; vision specific social functioning, near activities, vision specific role difficulties, general vision, vision specific mental health, color vision, and driving were modestly correlated; visual pain was weakly correlated; and two were not significantly correlated. Correcting for visual actuity weakened the strength of the correlation coefficients.


CONCLUSIONS
The SF-36 is unlikely to be useful in determining visual impairment in patients with glaucoma. Based on the moderate correlation between visual field impairment and the VF-14 score, this questionnaire may be generalizable to patients with glaucoma. Several of the NEI-VFQ scales correlate with visual field impairment scores in patients with a wide range of glaucomatous damage.
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D005901:Glaucoma / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014786:Vision Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D014792:Visual Acuity / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*