Prevalence of self-reported early glaucoma eye drop bottle exhaustion and associated risk factors: a patient survey

BMC Ophthalmology

Research Article

Daniel B Moore¹  Raghu C Mudumbai¹  Kristy L Moeller¹  Mark A Slabaugh¹  Philip P Chen¹  Charlene Walton² 

[1] Department of Ophthalmology, University of Washington, 325 Ninth Ave, 98104-2499, Seattle, WA, USA;Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USA;

关键词: Glaucoma;    Eyedrop;    Medication;    Treatment;    Adherence;    Compliance;    Visual impairment;    Low vision;    Blindness;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2415-14-79

 received in 2013-09-20, accepted in 2014-06-04,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundOne barrier to patient adherence with chronic topical glaucoma treatment is an inadequate amount of medication available between prescription refills. We examined the self-reported prevalence of early exhaustion of glaucoma eye drops prior to a scheduled refill, and associated risk factors.MethodsThis cross-sectional survey was performed at a University-based clinical practice. Glaucoma patients at the University of Washington who were experienced with eye drop application and were on a steady regimen of self-administered glaucoma drops in both eyes took a survey at the time of clinic examination. The main outcome measure was self-reported early eye drop bottle exhaustion.Results236 patients were eligible and chose to participate. In general, patients included were relatively healthy (mean 2.3 comorbid medical conditions). Sixty patients (25.4%) reported any problem with early exhaustion of eye drop bottles, and this was associated with visual acuity ≤ 20/70 in the better eye (P = .049). Twelve patients (5.1%) reported that they “often” (5–7 times per year), “usually” (8–11 times per year) or “always” ran out of eye drops prior to a scheduled refill. Patients affected by this higher level (≥5 times yearly) of eye drop bottle exhaustion were more likely to have poor visual acuity in their worse eye ≤ 20/70 (P = .015) and had significantly lower worse-eye logMAR (P = .043).ConclusionsSelf-reported early glaucoma bottle exhaustion regularly affected 5% of patients in our population and 25% reported early exhaustion at least once; the main risk factor was poor vision in at least one eye. These results may not be generalizable to a broad patient population, or to those inexperienced with eye drop self-administration. However, this pilot study compels further evaluation and consideration of early eye drop bottle exhaustion in glaucoma patients.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Moore et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.