Quality of Life in Age-Related Macular Degeneration - CNIB

In a study of 50 patients who underwent macular translocation 24 , pre­and
post­operative visual function (NEI­VFQ) and general health status (SF­12)
were measured. Overall vision function (NEI­VFQ) improved post­operatively
and specifically in the subscales measuring general vision, difficulty with
distance vision tasks, difficulty with near vision tasks, dependency, mental
health and social function. Improvement in near and distance VA was
associated with greater improvement in function (NEI­VFQ). Reading speed
improved for 29 patients and this was associated with improvements in NEI­
VFQ scores. Not surprisingly, there were no changes to SF­12 scores. Other
work has reported improvements in reading speed following macular
translocation 137 138 .
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) for the treatment of sub­foveal neovascular MD
has undergone extensive trials, but there has been little effort to measure its
effect on QoL or any other patient reported outcomes that may influence QoL.
In one prospective study of PDT 139 , at 12 months follow­up, 34 of 48 treated
patients had lost fewer than 3 lines of VA and, on average, the sample lost
fewer than two lines. VF­14 items showed either no change or a decrease in
function, consistent with the VA changes. Participants reported being less
anxious because of MD and that they stayed indoors less, but this may have
been due to adjusting to living with MD. There was no control group in this
study.
An unusual attempt to assess the impact of PDT on so called ‘QoL’, was
based on a computer­generated model 56 . Hypothetical patients (characterised
using data from the TAP study 140 ) were the ‘participants’. Utility values,
36