Disease-specific assessment of quality of life after decompression surgery for Graves' ophthalmopathy

Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) is an organ-specific autoimmune disease. Hydrophily of accumulated acidic mucopolysaccharides into bulbar adipose tissue leads to swelling of the eye muscles. Orbital surgical decompression is performed in severe cases of compressive optic neuropathy and severe corneal exposure or failure of steroid therapy. The study was designed to evaluate decompression surgery with respect to the clinical benefit and the patient's satisfaction by means of a disease-specific questionnaire.

The 90-item study questionnaire was distributed to 105 patients with GO who underwent orbital decompression surgery at the authors' institution.

A total of 88% of patients stated that decompression had helped them, 80% of the interviewees would undergo decompression again, 78% were content with their eye symptoms, and 71% were satisfied with the cosmetic result of decompression. Furthermore, analysis showed a clinically relevant increase in quality of life after surgery. The correlation between the clinical endpoint proptosis at last examination and the quality of life score proved to be significant (p=0.05).

The large majority of interviewees were satisfied with the result of the orbital decompression. These results confirmed that disfiguring proptosis is an important indication for decompression surgery.