Visual Functioning and Health-related Quality-of-Life are Compromised in Patients with Uveitis

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To assess the vision-related (VR) and health-related (HR) quality-of-life (QoL) of patients with uveitis.

Methods: In total, 60 patients with uveitis, 81 patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR), and 70 healthy subjects completed the National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire and the Medical Outcome Study 36-Item Short Form.

Results: Patients with uveitis reported lower HR- and VR-QoL than healthy subjects (p<0.05) and lower VR-QoL (p<0.001) than patients with DR. For patients with uveitis, multiple linear regression analyses indicated that lower HR-QoL scores were predicted by younger age (p<0.01), while lower VR-QoL scores were predicted by poorer visual acuity (p<0.001), ocular comorbidities (p<0.05), and female sex (p<0.05).

Conclusions: Patients with uveitis have significantly poorer VR- and HR-QoL than healthy control subjects. Uveitis has a more debilitating impact on VR-QoL than DR.

Keywords:

• Diabetic retinopathy
• ocular inflammation
• quality-of-life
• uveitis

ACKNOWLEGMENTS

The authors thank the staff of the Marsden Eye Specialists and St. Vincent’s Clinic for their help in recruiting patients for the study.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.