Artikel
Assessing the impact of eye allergy symptoms using the Eye Allergy Patient Impact Questionnaire (EAPIQ)
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Veröffentlicht: | 22. September 2004 |
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Objective
Ocular allergy symptoms can affect patients' daily activities and emotions. This study assessed the impact of seasonal eye allergy symptoms on patients' activities and emotions using the Eye Allergy Patient Questionnaire (EAPIQ).
Methods
The EAPIQ was administered at 4 different ophthalmology clinics in Germany from 2002-03. Responses for each item were aggregated and analyzed using the appropriate denominator of the number of total patients that responded to that item.
Results
A total of 88 patients (mean age 44) completed the EAPIQ, 77% were female. Patients reported experiencing itchy/burning eyes (89%) most frequently. Of all symptoms, patients were most troubled by itchy/burning eyes (86%) and swollen/puffy eyes (68%). Ocular allergy symptoms affected patients' time the most when going outdoors (46%). Patients reported having the most trouble with their ocular allergy symptoms when going outdoors (75%) and reading (77%). Of all reported emotions, patients reported being tired (41%) and troubled by being tired (75%) most frequently. Satisfaction with current treatment was reported in only 67% of patients indicating further opportunity for improvement with current eye allergy therapy.
Conclusions
In this study the EAPIQ demonstrated that patients reported having moderately severe seasonal ocular allergy symptoms and these symptoms affected their emotions and nearly all of their daily activities. Findings in this study were consistent with previous studies assessing the impact of eye allergy symptoms using the EAPIQ.