Females more likely to think their vision is bad after surgery

Female cataract surgery patients are more likely to assess their postoperative visual function as worse than male patients, according to a report published online ahead of print by Acta Ophthalmologica.

Britta Lundqvist and Eva Mönestam from Norrlands University Hospital, Umeå, Sweden conducted a prospective, longitudinal, population-based cohort study to analyze gender-related differences in subjective and objective visual function five-years after cataract surgery.

A total of 810 patients who had undergone cataract surgery between 1997 and 1998, had their visual acuity (VA) examined and were asked to complete questionnaires (VF-14) before surgery, immediately following surgery and five-years later. Five-hundred and thirty patients (177 men, 353 women) answered the questionnaire and 467 (156 men, 311 women) also underwent the VA examination.

Prior to and following surgery, women had a significantly lower age- and VA-adjusted VF-14 score (p=0.000 and p=0.036, respectively). This difference was not significant five years after surgery (p=0.16). Five years postoperatively, a significantly larger proportion of women had a decline of more than 0.1 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution of the better-seeing eye (p=0.013) but there were no significant gender-related differences in the operated eye.

It was the conclusion of this study that women are more likely to assess their postoperative visual function as worse than their male counterparts.