Abstract
Purpose Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the most important causes of blindness globally and may lead to decreased quality of life. Utility values for AMD patients according to sociodemographic and clinical characteristics have been little-studied, particularly among Asian populations. Methods A total of 1,283 AMD patients were identified from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2008 to 2012. A 45-degree digital retinal image for each eye was used to identify AMD patients. The utility values, calculated by the three level version of EuroQol-5D, of AMD patients according to sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were determined. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to identify factors associated with reduced utility values among AMD patients. Results The mean utility value for AMD patients was 0.8765. Patients who were older (mean utility value 0.8339), were women (0.8488), had lower education levels (0.8287), were not employed (0.8467), and had lower household income (0.8022) had lower utility values (all p values <0.001). Utility values did not significantly differ according to AMD subtype (p value 0.729), likely due to the lack of enough power as only 48 patients had late AMD. Patients with lower best-eye visual acuity (BEVA) had lower utility values compared to those with high BEVA, even among those with high worst-eye visual acuity (WEVA) (p value <0.001). Conclusion Sociodemographic factors and visual acuity are important factors in determining the quality of life among AMD patients. Preserving BEVA, regardless of WEVA, may be associated with improved quality of life.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0201399 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was supported by a grant from the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (Grant number: HI17C1234, URL: http://www.khidi.or.kr/eps). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Choi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.