Correlation of quality of life with clinical symptoms and signs at the time of glaucoma diagnosis.

PURPOSE: To examine the relationship between clinical measures of visual function and patient-reported measures of symptoms and health status in a large cohort of glaucoma patients at the time of diagnosis. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The 607 patients in the Collaborative Initial Glaucoma Treatment Study (CIGTS) received standardized examinations of visual acuity and visual field at enrollment. In addition, they completed a health-related quality-of-life instrument, which included the Visual Activities Questionnaire (VAQ), Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), a symptom and a comorbidity chart, a question about their degree of worry about becoming blind, and many other items.
RESULTS: The SIP total and dimension scores correlated only weakly, and not significantly, with visual acuity and visual field measures. The VAQ total and subscale scores, particularly the peripheral vision subscale, correlated weakly and significantly with visual acuity and visual field scores, especially those from the better eye. Worry about blindness and symptoms attributed to glaucoma correlated weakly but significantly to visual field scores from the worse eye. Attempts to improve correlations by scoring the visual fields differently, including only paracentral and pericentral test locations in the scores, and simulating binocular visual field scores were largely unsuccessful.
CONCLUSIONS: At diagnosis, most patients were relatively free of glaucoma-induced impairments, so clinical measures were poor predictors of a patient's perception of health-related quality of life. The vision-specific VAQ and glaucoma-related symptom score correlated better than the generic SIP with clinical measures at the time of enrollment into CIGTS.