Citation

Béchetoille A, Arnould B, Bron A, Baudouin C, Renard JP, Sellem E, Brouquet Y, Denis P, Nordmann JP, Rigeade MC, Bassols A, Benmedjahed K, Guillemin I, Rouland JF. Acta Ophthalmol. (Copenh) 2008; 86(1): 71-80.

Affiliation

Ophthalmological Practice, Paris, France.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Scriptor Publishers Aps)

DOI

10.1111/j.1600-0420.2007.00999.x

PMID

17725614

Abstract

PURPOSE: To validate a glaucoma-specific health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire: the Glau-QoL. METHODS: Patients with ocular hypertension (OHT) or glaucoma took part in a cross-sectional psychometric validation study (n = 573) and a separate reproducibility study (n = 244). Patients answered the 36-item Glau-QoL, designed from in-depth patient interviews. RESULTS: The clinical validity of the Glau-QoL was excellent and clearly demonstrated that as disease severity and visual field impairment increased, HRQoL scores for the Psychological Wellbeing, Self-image, Daily Life, Driving, Anxiety and Burden of Treatment domains were negatively affected. Increased age and lower visual acuity were also associated with lower HRQoL scores, although to a lesser extent than the previously mentioned criteria. Worsening of HRQoL domains correlated with the clinical stage of glaucoma: Anxiety and Burden of Treatment scores dropped noticeably when patients were first diagnosed and started treatment, followed by a decrease in scores for Driving, Daily Life, Psychological Wellbeing, and Self-image as clinical conditions worsened. Psychometric validation showed acceptable convergent and discriminant validity of the Glau-QoL, and good reproducibility, with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) > or = 0.69. Internal consistency reliability was high (Cronbach's alpha coefficients > 0.70) for the Daily Life, Psychological Wellbeing, Burden of Treatment and Driving domains; acceptable (coefficients of 0.65 and 0.68, respectively) for the Self-image and Anxiety domains; and weak (coefficient = 0.58) for the Confidence in Health Care domain. CONCLUSIONS: The Glau-QoL questionnaire is a valid and specific HRQoL instrument that demonstrates excellent correlations with disease progression in patients with glaucoma and/or OHT.

Language: en