The effectiveness of low-vision rehabilitation on participation in daily living and quality of life

Purpose: To evaluate the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary low-vision rehabilitation program on quality of life evaluated by the Impact of Vision Impairment (IVI) instrument. Methods: First-time referrals to low-vision clinics were assessed before and after rehabilitation (3–6 months). Rasch analysis was used to estimate the three IVI subscale and overall values on an interval scale. A mixed between–within subjects ANOVA was used to identify whether presenting visual acuity had an interaction effect with rehabilitation change. Cohen d values were used to estimate the magnitude of the change and the standardized response mean (SRM) procedure was selected to determine the clinical significance of the rehabilitation-induced changes. Results: One hundred twenty-four women and 68 men (mean age, 80.3 years) completed the rehabilitation. Most had age-related macular degeneration (62%, 119) and were moderately to severely vision impaired (