Sunridge International, Inc. (SNDZ)

[TripleL]

Quality of life

Not only do individuals and governments incur costs in the treatment and care of glaucoma patients, but there is also a quality-of-life cost for those with the disease.

Dr. Bourne is coordinating the vision loss group for the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors project, which will report in 2010 on the contribution of glaucoma to the global burden of disease by reviewing all population-based studies for the past 30 years. He said that limited research has been conducted comparing the effect on quality of life of visual loss or blindness caused by glaucoma as compared with other ocular diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration.

“Although we know as clinicians that there are differences, very few studies have tried to evaluate it,” he said. “The diseases typically affect different areas of the visual field. Glaucoma blindness is far more problematic than the central visual loss associated with age-related macular degeneration in terms of function.”

Dr. Quigley is studying quality-of-life issues in U.S. patients with moderate glaucoma. For the older population, visual loss from glaucoma can be devastating because patients can lose their independence when vision loss prevents them from driving. Patients who cannot drive sometimes have no other option than to leave their homes and move into assisted living facilities, he said.

Loss of vision from glaucoma also becomes a burden when patients attempt to do basic tasks such as reading, he said. In addition, GPS monitoring devices on patients’ belt buckles have shown how physical activity is affected by vision loss from the disease.

“It changes a lot of things that people enjoy in their lives to have a blinding condition like glaucoma, even when it doesn’t put them in the state of being so-called legally blind,” Dr. Quigley said.