Female cataract surgery patients report worse visual function, study finds

After adjusting for age and visual acuity at baseline and postoperatively, a prospective study found that female cataract surgery patients report having worse visual function than male patients. While men had a better best corrected visual acuity at 5 years postop, these differences were not significant.

"It is important to be aware of gender-related differences in perception when performing questionnaire-based outcome studies," the study authors said in the August issue of Acta Ophthalmologica.

To determine possible gender-related differences in visual function after cataract surgery, Britta Lundqvist, MD, and Eva Mönestam, MD, PhD, examined visual acuity data and Visual Function Index questionnaire (VF-14) responses at baseline, postop and 5-year follow-up for 530 patients who underwent cataract surgery during a 1-year period at Norrlands University Hospital in Umeå, Sweden. Specifically, 177 of these patients were men and 353 were women. A total of 467 of these patients, 156 men and 311 women, underwent eye examinations.

The women were significantly older (P = .009) and received bilateral surgery more often than men (P = .005), the authors noted.

After adjusting for age and visual acuity, the investigators found that women had a significantly lower VF-14 score at baseline (P = .000) and postoperatively (P = .036); however, this difference was not significant at 5-year follow-up (P = .16).

Also at 5-year follow-up, visual acuity had worsened by more than 0.1 logMAR in the better-seeing eye in a significantly larger number of women (P = .013); however, the investigators found no significant gender-related differences in the operated eye, according to the study.