As a practitioner having Dry Eye Disease (DED) it is sometimes is difficult to get others to understand how frustrating the condition is. It is always with you which certainly is much more than just an inconvenience. We practitioners should address this disorder with the vigor that it deserves. Or do we just ignore or minimize DED since it rarely causes someone to suffer permanent damage or go blind; and deal with Glaucoma for instance which affects 1/10 the number of our patients. This publication along with “Quality of Life” studies support the fact that Dry Eye needs to be diagnosed and addressed.
Symptomatic Dry Eye and Its Influence on Vision-Related Daily Activities
SOURCE: Tong L, Waduthantri S, Wong TY, et al. Impact of symptomatic dry eye on vision-related daily activities: The Singapore Malay Eye Study. Eye 2010;24(9):1486–1491.
The authors of this population-based survey of eye diseases sought to examine the impact of symptomatic dry eye on vision-related daily activities in 3,280 (78.7% response rate) Malay persons aged 40 years, who were randomly selected from designated areas in southwestern Singapore.
They administered to participants a standardized dry eye questionnaire consisting of six questions on symptoms and a questionnaire on vision-related daily activities; they also conducted a comprehensive systemic and ocular examination of participants. The authors defined symptomatic dry eye as one or more self-reported symptoms that were frequently present (ranked as often or all the time) and used logistic regression method to examine the relationship of symptomatic dry eye with difficulty in performing daily activities.
They reported that in adults without visual impairment, symptomatic dry eye after adjusting for age, gender and presenting visual acuity was significantly associated with difficulty in vision-related activities such as navigating stairs (odds ratio [OR]=1.96, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.28–3.00), recognizing friends (OR=1.99, 95% CI: 1.45–2.73), reading road signs (OR=1.87, 95% CI: 1.36–2.57), reading newspaper (OR=1.50, 95% CI: 1.11–2.04), watching television (OR=1.90, 95% CI: 1.26–2.87), cooking (OR=1.94, 95% CI: 1.02–3.71) and driving at night (OR=2.06, 95% CI: 1.32–3.21).
To conclude, the authors associated symptomatic dry eye with difficulty in performing vision-dependent tasks, independent of visual acuity and other factors. These findings have public health significance and suggest that the visual dysfunction in dry eye should be further characterized.
