How does sight loss affect quality of life in Trinidad and Tobago?

Overview

Sight loss and age-rated eye problems are major global health issues. Dr Braithwate and team have reviewed all of the population-based research on eye conditions since 1980 and have found that there is hardly any information from Latin America and the Caribbean. The team is starting to address this and is working with the University of the West Indies on a new study – the National Eye Survey of Trinidad and Tobago.

Most studies of this kind just look at how many people are affected by a condition (prevalence), how many new cases there are (incidence) and what puts people at risk. But there is also a need to understand the impact of sight loss on daily activates and quality of life.

So this project is running alongside the national prevalence study and is looking at PROMs. These are ‘patient-reported outcome measures’ – essentially people answering questionnaire about eye conditions and their lives.

The team is gathering the information and finding out how reliable the results are and how acceptable this form of information-gathering is. They are also looking at what factors might influence people’s answers, such as access to services, age, gender, when they were diagnosed and so on.

Having reliable information that represents the country will be important for targeting resources and low-vision services.