Glaucoma QOL questionnaire ticks the right boxes

The glaucoma-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, Glau-Qol, demonstrates good correlations with disease progression in patients with glaucoma and ocular hypertension (OHT), according to the results of a study published online ahead of print by Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica.

Alain Béchetoille from Paris and colleagues from across France enrolled patients with OHT or glaucoma (n=573) to take part in a cross-sectional psychometric validation study and a separate reproducibility study (n=244). Each subject answered the 36-item Glau-Qol questionnaire, which was designed from in-depth patient interviews.

The clinical validity of the questionnaire was found to be excellent. It clearly demonstrated that as disease severity and visual field impairment increased, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores from psychological wellbeing, self-image, daily life, driving, anxiety and burden of treatment domains were negatively affected. Increased age and lower visual acuity were also associated with lower HRQoL scores but to a lesser extent.

Psychometric validation demonstrated acceptable convergent and discriminant validity of the Glau-QoL and good reproducibility, with intra-class correlation coefficients and concordance correlation coefficients ≥0.69.

It was the conclusion of the researchers that the Glau-QoL questionnaire is a valid instrument that demonstrates excellent correlations with disease progression in patients with glaucoma and OHT.