Purpose: This study compared the general health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and the vision-specific HRQOL in patients following the surgical removal of 1 eye who had good vision in the remaining eye to a group of binocular patients with good vision in OU.
Methods: The Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 12 and the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire HRQOL surveys were administered to 29 patients who had surgical removal of an eye who attended an ocular prosthetics clinic and to 25 binocular persons who accompanied a patient. All subjects in each group had best-corrected visual acuity of 20/40 or better. Overall statistical significance was tested using Cramer's V followed by individual t tests for independent groups for each of the scales on the 2 questionnaires to determine whether the means between the 2 groups differed statistically.
Results: The patient group had a mean age of 50.98 years (range, 19-76 years). The control group had a mean age of 49.46 years (range, 18-76 years). The mean time after loss of vision was 28.03 years (range, 1-71 years), and the mean time from surgical removal of the eye was 23.6 years (range, 0.5-59.5 years). There was an overall significant difference between the 2 groups on the 15 derived subscales of the 2 forms (Cramer's V, p = 0.0025). Three general HRQOL subscales (Short Form 12-mental component summary, Short Form 12 physical component summary, and National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire-General Health) showed no differences between the 2 groups (p = 0.48, p = 0.81, and p = 0.78, respectively). Three of the 12 vision-specific National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire subscales demonstrated statistically significant differences between the patient and control groups: peripheral vision (p = 0.0006), role difficulties (p = 0.015), and the composite score (p = 0.014). In addition, 2 monocular patients had given up driving compared with no binocular subjects (p = 0.056).
Conclusions: This population of monocular patients had general physical and mental HRQOL equivalent to the normal binocular group despite the surgical removal of 1 eye. However, the reduced vision-specific HRQOL of monocular patients on the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire indicates that there are substantial residual visual deficits even after prolonged monocular status.