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Background

One of the most common causes of vision impairment in patients with diabetes is diabetic macular edema (DME) and is regarded as the most feared late diabetic complication. In January 2011 a treatment for DME was approved, called anti-Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor treatment. The treatment involves an injection into the vitreous of the eye and places increasing demands on the patient because of more visits and a stressful treatment. Therefore it is of most importance to capturing patients’ thoughts and feelings, so called Patient reported Outcome (PRO).

Aim

To examine patient-reported outcome (PRO) in a selected group of Swedish patients with diabetes-related macula edema about to receive anti-vascular endothelial growth factor treatment for diabetic macular edema.

Method

Visual functioning was measured with National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire 25 (NEI-VFQ-25), quality of life was measured with Short Form- 36 (SF-36). The initial eye examination included measurement of visual acuity with the ETDRS, and retinal thickness by OCT. In addition, medical variables were collected. The data collection was performed at baseline, after 4 months and one year. In this abstract we reported the result from the baseline.

Result

The participants were 30 men and 29 women (mean age, 68.5 years) and 92% of them had type 2 diabetes. With NEI VFQ-25, the participants showed the lowest score for the subscale of general health (mean 35.65 ± 22.04) and the highest for dependency (mean 93.48 ± 18.12). For SF-36, the participants gave the lowest score in the subscale of general health (mean 56.55 ± 22.14) and the highest for the subscale of role emotional (mean 88.73 ± 22.32). The mean ETDRS score in the eye planned for treatment was 63.9 (± 13.2) and the mean central retinal thickness was 396 (± 129).

Conclusions: Patients diagnosed with diabetes macula edema about to receive anti-VEGF treatment reported low general health. Hence, it is of most importance to follow up patients’ thoughts and feelings (PRO) after the treatment is performed in order to promote improvements in the quality of patient care.