Vision related quality of life in patients with diabetic retinopathy

Purpose: To assess vision related quality of life (VRQoL) in patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR). Materials and Methods: Ninety-three patients with DR were included in the study. Turkish version of VFQ (Visual function questionnaire) -25 was used for measuring VRQoL. The effects of age, gender, education, duration of diabetes mellitus (DM), macular edema (ME), HbA1c, comorbidity, medication, visual acuity (VA) and severity of DR on VRQoL were searched. Results: Composite VFQ-25 score was significantly higher in patients who had better education, had a shorter duration of DM and had better VA. Gender, education and comorbidities were significantly associated with some of the subscales. After adjusted for the effect of age, gender, education, severity of DM, comorbidities, VA, HbA1c, laser photocoagulation, ME and medications; VA and HbA1c were significantly associated with composite score. Conclusions: High HbA1c and poor VA is significantly associated with poor VRQoL. From the patients' perspective, DR also has an effect on general health, mental health and role difficulties