Quality of life in patients affected by age-related macular degeneration

Abstract

Context: Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) is an eye condition which results in loss of vision because of damage to the retina. ARMD affects central vision, and it shows association with psychological distress and depression. Aims: Our study aimed to evaluate the quality of life (QoL) in patients with ARMD and its association with best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and treatment. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study including patients clinically diagnosed as neovascular ARMD (wet ARMD) and geographic atrophy (dry ARMD). Patients were classified into Group 1: Patients with dry ARMD, Group 2: Patients with wet ARMD not treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) injections, and Group 3: Patients with wet ARMD who had received at least 3 anti-VEGF injections. To assess the vision-related QoL, National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire-25 (NEI VFQ-25) was used. Results: We included 60 patients, 20 in each group. There were 23 women and 37 men; with mean age of 78.2 ± 7.9 years. We observed significant difference in near activities (P = 0.03), distance activities (P = 0.002), and vision-specific social functioning (P = 0.001), when comparing VFQ-25 subdomain scores with patients with better eye BCVA. We found Group 3 had significantly more vision-specific role difficulties than Group 1 (41.87 ± 21.94 vs. 26.87 ± 25.73). We found Group 2 had significantly better vision-specific mental health (49.37 ± 19.8 vs. 35.31 ± 19.9) and lesser vision-specific dependency than Group 3 (57.08 ± 26.6 vs. 40.00 ± 26.7). Conclusions: Vision-specific mental health is better in untreated wet ARMD patients than those who have taken anti-VEGF injections in our study population.