Oftalmologia Pediátrica, Serviço de Oftalmologia, Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Central
- Apresentado na sessão focus digital session 1-Strabismus no 3.rd World Congress of Paediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (WCPOS), Barcelona, Espanha, Setembro de 2015
Introduction: adult strabismus’ successful surgical outcomes have been widely reported in the scientific literature. However, sensorial and motor outcomes aside, patients frequently experience social, self-image or work disabilities. Adult Strabismus 20 (AS-20) and Visual Function Questionnaire 25 (VFQ-25) are readily available questionnaires that can be used to assess the quality of life of adult strabismus patients. To our knowledge, none of the aforementioned questionnaires has ever been applied in the Portuguese population.
Purpose: to analyze and report the results obtained from the application of the AS-20 and VFQ-25 questionnaires in a subset of adult strabismus patients from the Department of Ophthalmology of Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Central. Follow-up time averaged 6 months.
Materials and Methods: twenty two patients completed both questionnaires before and after being submitted to strabismus surgery. Answers were compared between instances to assess the influence of surgery on functional and psychosocial outcomes.
In each questionnaire, individual questions were associated with a specific score which was summed up to a total score ranging from 0 to 100, with 0 being classified as the worst overall result and 100 as the best. Mean overall scores were submitted to statistical analysis to compare differences obtained before and after surgical intervention. A comparison was also performed between results obtained from two established patient subgroups: patients without (group 1) and with diplopia (group 2).
Results: patients from group 1 (43.83 versus 70.67) were found to improve significantly more than patients from group 2 (60 versus 75.36) regarding AS-20 psychosocial results. Functional scores were significantly and similarly improved in both groups (60.33 versus 72.17 for group 1 and 57.14 versus 66.78 for group 2). Results obtained from the application of the AS-20 questionnaire demonstrated greater statistical significance than the ones obtained when VFQ-25 was applied.
Conclusion: successful surgery (ie. ocular alignment) is well recognized as an important factor in the treatment of adult strabismus. However, some attention should also be driven towards the impact of surgery over functional and psychosocial outcomes which can significantly influence the patient’s overall quality of life.