Assessment of vision-related quality of life measures in ophthalmic conditions.

In this researching this report, a literature search of Entrez PubMed revealed 178 suitable articles, published between January 2000 and April 2006, concerning vision-related quality of life and progressive sight loss. Of these, 147 concerned previously developed instruments and mainly focused on two areas: descriptions of health-related quality of life in certain diseases or treatments (n = 99) and descriptions of psychometric properties of an instrument (n = 48). A total of 17 new instruments were described in 31 articles. The large number of articles reflects the growing awareness of the need for patients' self-assessment of visual function; it may also reflect the difficulty of developing psychometrically robust instruments.