Quality of life of elderly Japanese patients with glaucoma.

To evaluate the quality of life (QOL) of elderly Japanese glaucoma patients, we performed a survey of 114 outpatients of a university eye clinic aged from 47 to 86 years. We examined 110 cases using one-way anova, Bonferroni's multiple comparison, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient analysis. The group with better traditional visual measures had better QOL than the group with worse visual acuity. In the elderly groups of patients, the loss of hopes for future life and its consequences caused greater reduction in QOL than did the symptoms of glaucoma. The reliability of our questionnaire was high as determined using alpha-coefficients of Cronbach reliability analysis. Our questionnaire was reliable and useful for the assessment of QOL of elderly Japanese glaucoma patients.