Comparative assessment of sleep quality in glaucoma and cataract patients: the need for developing appropriate...

Glaucoma and cataract are the most frequent causes of blindness worldwide with very distinct etiology and pathogenesis. Sleep disturbances have been reported in both conditions with their etiology attributed not only to the particular underlying eye condition but to other comorbid conditions such as chronic diseases and old age. This study compares sleep quality in fifty primary open-angle glaucoma patients and fifty cataract patients of similar vision loss in order to determine the comparative impact of those eye disorders in sleep quality.

The glaucoma patients group was comprised of 50 patients with bilateral primary open-angle glaucoma, of moderate stage (38 men and 12 women, mean age = 62.94 years, SD = 4.99 years). The cataract patient group was comprised of 50 gender-matched cataract patients with either cortical sclerotic or posterior sclerotic types of cataracts (mean age = 62.38 years, SD = 4.62 years). All cataract patients were receiving a pre-surgery evaluation at the time of the study and had cataract involvement of both eyes that necessitated cataract surgery. All patients were administered the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), a self-administered questionnaire designed to subjectively evaluate sleep quality over the preceding month, and their findings were statistically compared.

Both groups had overall poor sleep quality but the glaucoma patients had worse PSQI total scores (p = .042), higher sleep latency (p = .005) and sleep disturbance (p = .002).

Those findings suggest that among patients with comparable vision loss, glaucoma patients may be even more severely affected with disordered sleep than cataract patients. There is a need for the creation and testing of treatment modalities for chronodisruption in both patient groups.