Quality of life of patients with an advanced stage of proliferative diabetic retinopathy after application of various vitrectomy technologies

Abstract

Purpose: A comparative assessment of quality of life (QL) after the use of various vitrectomy (VE) technologies in patients with an advanced stage of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (ASPDR).Material and methods. We examined 132 patients aged 42 to 76 (average age 62.8 ± 2.4 years) who met the classification criteria of ASPDR: impossibility to estimate the area of neovascularization; the fundus of the eye in the posterior pole cannot be seen or can only partialy be seen using an ophthalmoscope; evidence of preretinal or vitreal hemorrhage in the posterior pole with an area of more than 4 optic discs and retinoschisis in the macular zone. All patients were divided into two groups, comparable in age, gender and visual status of the “healthy” eye: the main group (69 eyes), in which VE was performed according to the technique developed by the authors, and the control (63 eyes), in which the traditional VE technique was used. QL was assessed before surgery and 3 months after it using the VFQ-25 and QL-20 questionnaires.Results. QL was found to be higher when the new surgery technique was used: the data of VFA-25 showed a 12.9% increase (p < 0.05) and QL-20 showed a 29.2% increase (p < 0.01), which points to a higher clinical effectiveness of the newly developed surgical treatment technique than that of the traditional technique.Conclusion. The results obtained are related to the ophthalmological features of the developed surgical treatment of ASPDR: combined (phacoemulsification of cataracts + IOL + vitrectomy) one-stage intervention, lack of drainage of subretinal fluid, etc.), medication support (preliminary intravitreal administration of an angiogenesis inhibitor) and anesthesia (intervention under local anesthesia with intravenous sedation). The differences are most effectively identified using the special QL-20 questionnaire.