Vision-Related Quality of Life after Cataract Surgery in West Africa

To study vision related quality of life (VRQoL) before and after a massive cataract campaign in West Africa and the relationship with visual indicators.

All the patients who received cataract surgery in Burkina Faso during a blindness prevention campaign were examined. VRQoL was assessed using a modified version of the WHO/PBD VF20. The questionnaire was changed to reflect the socioeconomic and local culture. Patients were interviewed by local interviewers before and three months after surgery. A quality of life related to vision index (QoL-RVI) was calculated.

A total of 305 patients underwent cataract extraction in at least one eye, of these, a total of 196 (64%) completed the study. Mean age was 61.97 ± 14.39 years. The majority of eyes had poor visual acuity (VA<20/200, log MAR: 1.0) preoperatively (88.70%) with a mean VA of logMAR 2.17 ± 0.70 (20/2000) which improved to 0.86 ± 0.64 LogMAR (20/150) 3 months after cataract surgery. QoL-RVI improved postoperatively in 90.2% of patients, did not change in 3.1% and was worse in 6.7%. Statistically significant differences were detected (Wilcoxon test p <0.05) for all items tested before and after surgeries. Correlations for the patients after operations showed that there was a statistically significant relation between a global estimated QoL-RVI and the VA previous to the surgery (-0.196 p=0.014), regarding the same index and the VA after the procedures (-0,35 p=0,00018).

Cataract surgery increases the quality of life of patients living in a developing country such as Burkina Faso and the improvement correlates with the recovery of the visual acuity.