Abstract
Aim: To evaluate life quality of elderly people with acquired low vision before and after hearing and speech intervention. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study was made with 52 elderly people with acquired low vision. Two questionnaires that measures life quality were used in this study. The first was ‘Low Quality of Life Vision (LVQOL)’ and the second the ‘National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEIVFQ-25)’. The study included people with more than 60 years with acquired low vision and who accepted to participate signing the consent form. The hearing and speech therapy were made into three months, one meeting a week. The questionnaires were applied in the first and last day of the intervention. Results: The age ranged between 60 and 91 years. The macular disorder (38%), such as age-related macular degeneration, macular hole and high myopia were the main causes of visual loss. Although the tests show superior performance after the intervention, there was no statistically significant difference. On the question about difficulties seeing in general, 17 participants answered that they had much more difficulty before the intervention and only 5 participants have reported having much difficulty after the intervention. Conclusion: The intervention trended to positive results, and after the meetings, participants showed improvements in aspects of the two questionnaires used in the study, decreasing the degree of difficulty in performing activities.
Highlights
In the last decade, life quality related to health has become an important issue and the need of researches regarding this issue
The inclusion criteria were: participants over 60 years, according to the World Health Organization - WHO; acquired low vision (visual acuity equal or less than 6/18 (0.3), according to WHO); attended at Outpatient Low Vision/HC/UNICAMP (VSN-HCUNICAMP); with no other associated disabilities and/or mental illness; subjects who participated in three meetings called Hearing and Speech Intervention consecutively; participants who answered both questionnaires before and after Hearing and Speech Intervention; Inclusion voluntary, by signing Consent Form for the period from February 2011 to June 2012 (16 months)
The first questionnaires was the ‘Low Quality of Life Vision’ (LVQOL) which contains 25 questions for low vision, and evaluated sub-items for each point analyzed, for instance, the basic aspects, mobility, adaptation, reading and working. It was used a Portuguese version, which is a result of the thesis entitled “Low Vision Elderly: Causes, Functional Status, Perceptions of Constraints and Visual Rehabilitation Unit at University Hospital” by Prof
Summary
Life quality related to health has become an important issue and the need of researches regarding this issue. Investigations of the conditions that allow life quality in old age and the variations that the best age provides is getting great scientific and social importance and attention. The term “quality of life” (QOL) is the subjective perception of wellbeing and wholeness. It is a broad concept affected in a complex way by a person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, and his or her relationship to the salient features of his or her environment[3]
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