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ABSTRACT
The College of Optometrists in Vision Development Quality of Life (COVD-QOL) Assessment is comprised of 30 questions to quantify patients' quality of life, pre and post vision therapy (VT). The scores of individual questions as well as the total scores are evaluated. This paper reports an analysis of the prospective, multi-office, COVD-QOL data pre and post VT. Six offices submitted the scores of 416 patients. The data were statistically analyzed by paired t-tests, assuming a Likert Scale, for changes in the total pre and post VT scores. The analysis of the difference between the average total pre-score of 45.7 and the average total post-score of 18.81 was significant at the p<.001 level. This indicated that the patients reported significantly fewer symptoms after VT.
KEY WORDS
College of Optometrists in Vision Development Quality of Life Questionnaire (COVD-QOL), quality of life (QOL), subjective quantification of quality of life, vision therapy
INTRODUCTION
Quality of life (QOL) is defined as.... physical factors, psychologie and cognitive factors that reflect the emotional well-being of the patient, and the perception of the patient s health by the patient and by his or her family.1 A number of recent reports have served to legitimize QOL instruments as a measure of health care outcomes.1-4
At the clinical level, the purpose of the QOL assessments is to afford patients an opportunity to identify and quantify issues that are important in their activities of daily living. The patient's subjective judgments provide important information that is not always available from clinical data.2 The basic method is for the patient to complete a QOL assessment prior to therapy. The same instrument can then be used periodically during the treatment to assess the patient's perception of progress. However, the QOL assessment at the termination of treatment represents the functional effect of the diagnosis and its consequent therapy, as perceived by the patient.3
The College of Optometrists in Vision Development Quality of Life (COVD-QOL) Assessment was used in this project. see Appendix A. This assessment was developed by a task force of COVD.2 The assessment is comprised of thirty questions that address four areas pertaining to quality of life: physical/occupational, psychological, social interaction and somatic sensation. Each question is scored on a scale from zero to four....