Glaucoma patients' assessment of their visual function and quality of life.

PURPOSE

To determine how glaucoma and glaucoma suspect patients' rating of their vision correlates with Esterman binocular visual field testing and other visual function tests.

METHODS

One hundred ninety-one glaucoma patients and 46 glaucoma suspect patients underwent binocular visual field testing and evaluated their vision using the linear rating scale and time-tradeoff utility tests, the National Eye Institute Visual Functional Questionnaire (NEI VFQ-25), and the Short Form 36 (SF-36) quality-of-life instruments.

RESULTS

The mean Esterman score was 88.2 +/- 17.4 for the glaucoma subjects and 95.2 + 6.9 for glaucoma suspect subjects (maximum score 100). On a scale from 0 (blind) to 100 (ideal), the mean rating of vision for glaucoma patients and glaucoma suspect patients was 74.8 +/- 17.3 and 78.9 +/- 18.5, respectively. The Esterman test correlated moderately with the overall NEI VFQ-25 score (partial correlation coefficient (PCC) = 0.32, P = 0.001), but only weakly with the linear rating scale (PCC = 0.17, P = 0.02), and the time-tradeoff (PCC = 0.14, P = 0.06).

CONCLUSION

Utility values that glaucoma and glaucoma suspect patients assign to their vision do not correlate well with Esterman results. A challenge for the future is the design of clinical tests of vision that better correlate with patient perceptions.