Glaucoma is associated with poorer self-rated vision, vision concerns and health: Results from 59,168 questionnaire responses

Purpose

This study aimed to examine self-rated vision, vision concerns, and general health in individuals with and without glaucoma. Such assessments offer a broad view of a person's overall well-being and potential health issues and provide valuable insights into the characteristics of glaucoma patients.

Design

Cross-sectional.

Methods

We used questionnaire responses from Project FOREVER (Finding Ophthalmic Risk and Evaluating the Value of Eye exams and their predictive Reliability) to evaluate self-rated vision and general health on a scale ranging from 1 (excellent), 2 (good), 3 (reasonable), 4 (poor) to 5 (very bad). Additionally, the vision concerns were rated on a scale from 1 (never), 2 (rarely), 3 (once in a while), 4 (often) to 5 (always). A glaucoma diagnosis was self-reported and obtained from the questionnaire. To investigate the strength and direction of associations, we used binomial logistic regression models including self-assessment, age, and sex as confounding variables and glaucoma status as the dependent variable.

Results

This study analyzed questionnaire data from 59,168 participants, with an average age of 55.2 years (SD 15.0), and 62.0 % being women. Of these, 900 individuals (1.5 %) reported having a glaucoma diagnosis. Individuals having glaucoma reported poorer self-ratings in vision, vision concerns and general health. Specifically, the odds ratios for the poorest ratings were 2.46 for self-rated vision (95 % CI 1.70–3.55, p < 0.001), 8.04 for self-rated vision concerns (95 % CI 5.44–11.90, p < 0.001) and 1.86 for self-rated health (95 % CI 1.16–2.98, p = 0.010).

Conclusion

Glaucoma status is associated with poorer self-assessments of vision, vision concerns, and health. This suggests that individuals with glaucoma experience more vision and health challenges than people without the disease and the three assessments can be used as tools to characterize glaucoma patients in risk profiling efforts.