Comparison of VF-14 scores among different ophthalmic surgical interventions

To clarify surgical outcomes for 5 ophthalmic diseases in terms of vision-related quality of life (QOL), we sent a self-administered Visual Function Questionnaire-14 (VF-14) to patients 3 months postoperatively, and the VF-14 scores for the surgical outcome of strabismus were compared with those of patients with diabetic macular edema (DME), cataract, glaucoma, and epiretinal membrane (ERM). Test-retest repeatability of VF-14 was evaluated with Bland-Altman analysis. Of the 625 eligible patients who were referred for enrollment, 48 with comitant strabismus, 50 with incomitant strabismus, 45 with DME, 38 with cataract, 129 with glaucoma, and 73 with ERM agreed to answer. Eighty percent of subjects showed 95% limits of agreement with the VF-14 evaluated by repeated measurements. The gain by surgery for incomitant strabismus was not different from that of cataract (p = 0.5551), but it was significantly better than those of DME (p = 0.0266), comitant strabismus (p = 0.0128), ERM (p = 0.0021), glaucoma with cataract (p < 0.0001), and glaucoma alone (p < 0.0001). The surgical outcome in terms of QOL for patients with incomitant strabismus was good and comparable to that of patients with cataract surgery.