Original articleLongitudinal Changes in Visual Acuity and Health-related Quality of Life: The Los Angeles Latino Eye Study
Section snippets
Methods
Data for these analyses were collected as part of a population-based study of eye disease in adults living in California. Details of the study design and data collected have been described previously.1 We completed a census of all residential households in 6 census tracts in La Puente to identify individuals eligible to be included in the study. The definition of eligibility included men and women who were ≥40 years of age, self-described as Latino, and who lived in 1 of the 6 census tracts.
Description of the Health-related Quality of Life Study Cohort
The HRQOL study cohort includes 3169 LALES participants with complete clinical examination and HRQOL data collected at baseline and at 4-years of follow-up. A total of 7789 participants were identified as eligible for LALES at baseline; 6142 (79%) had complete ophthalmic examination data and of these 4650 (76%) also had complete examination data at the 4-year follow-up examination. A total of 1192 participants were excluded from the analyses because they did not answer the NEI-VFQ-25 survey at
Discussion
In this population-based study of adults, we found statistically significant changes in mean HRQOL scores over the 4-year follow-up period for participants who had clinically meaningful changes in VA, although mean changes in HRQOL scores were small for participants with little or no change in VA.
Several studies of clinic-based populations also have examined the relationships between longitudinal changes in VA and HRQOL. Mangione et al5 found that improvements in VA after cataract surgery were
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2019, Journal of Cataract and Refractive SurgeryCitation Excerpt :This is important because visual impairment in all societies leads to pronounced socioeconomic and human consequences. People who have lost visual acuity suffer from several adverse implications for well-being and health,12 for instance, diminished quality of life and a reduction in mental and physical functioning as well as higher rates of depression,13 reduced social interaction, increased risk for falls and fractures,14 loss of driving ability, and loss of independence leading to institutionalization.15 In a recent study of the elderly with cataract, cataract surgery was associated with a decrease in all-cause mortality.16
Manuscript no. 2009-1241.
A list of the members of the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study Group is available online in Appendix 1 at http://aaojournal.org).
Financial Disclosure(s): National Institutes of Health Grants NEI U10-EY-11753 and EY-03040 and an unrestricted grant from the Research to Prevent Blindness, New York, NY. Rohit Varma is a Research to Prevent Blindness Sybil B. Harrington Scholar. Ron D. Hays was supported in part by the UCLA Resource Center for Minority Aging Research/Center for Health Improvement in Minority Elderly (RCMAR/CHIME), NIH/NIA Grant Award Number P30AG021684.
Conflict of Interest: No conflicting relationship exists for any author.