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Dry eye questionnaire found effective
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A short questionnaire to aid in diagnosing clinical dry eye was found to be repeatable, with good sensitivity and specificity, in a recent clinical study.
Debra A. Schaumberg, ScD, OC, MPH, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School evaluated the questionnaire, which includes just three questions, using participants in two large studies. The researchers then mailed a longer, 16-question survey to a subset of 690 patients, a third of whom had dry eye syndrome based on their responses to the short questionnaire.
The researchers found that patients' responses to the short questionnaire correlated highly (r = 0.75) with the score derived from the longer questionnaire, according to the study.
Standardized ophthalmic exams performed on 53 patients, using a cutoff value of 10 mm or less on the Schirmer 1 test, showed an 83% specificity and 77% sensitivity for the short questionnaire, the authors said.
The study appeared in the July issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology.