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Los Angeles Latino Eye Study shows low self-reporting of ocular disease
Self-reporting of eye disease and treatment yielded a sharp underestimation of disease prevalence, according to the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study.
“Among Latinos, self-reporting of eye disease and surgical history provides a significant underestimate of the disease burden,” the study authors said. “This may lead to significant misclassification in vision research if self-report alone is used to identify persons with eye disease. … When possible, clinical examination or other objective measures should be incorporated in addition to patient self-report.”
The population-based, cross-sectional study included 6,357 Latino subjects older than 40 years who participated in the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study.
Investigators calculated sensitivity and specificity for self-reported cataract, age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and surgical intervention for cataract and diabetic retinopathy. The amount of time since the subjects’ last eye examination was also recorded.
For subjects who reported their most recent eye exam as less than 1 year earlier, sensitivity was 36.8% for cataract, 37.7% for glaucoma, 5.1% for AMD and 25.7% for diabetic retinopathy.
Specificity was 92.5% for cataract, 96.3% for glaucoma, 98.9% for AMD and 94.2% for diabetic retinopathy.
“In our cohort, all four diagnoses — cataract, AMD, glaucoma and [diabetic retinopathy] — had a low sensitivity and high specificity of self-reporting. This indicates that not self-reporting the presence of one of these conditions was not a good measure of whether a person had the disease, but if a participant did report the presence of one of these conditions it was likely to be accurate,” the authors said.