General principles for AIDS research.

Abstract

The roleof the ophthalmologist in caring for the patient with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is to preserve good vision in at least 1 eye for the life of the patient. Loss of vision is an issue of serious morbidity associated with the disease and, as such, affects the patient's visual functioning and perception of the quality of life. Accordingly, future clinical research must monitor the patient's response to the disease and its treatment not only using traditional clinical measures, but also incorporating the patient's reports of changes in visual function as related to quality of life. These subjective indices of outcome can be assessed with appropriately designed questionnaires. The development of such instruments must be based on direct patient input, such as that obtained through focus groups, and undergo rigorous psychometric testing and refinement to establish reproducibility and an optimal scoring algorithm. Investigating the correlation of scores on the