Abstract
Background
Reading performance in glaucoma patients has yet to be studied. We hypothesized that glaucomatous visual field loss affects reading performance even in patients with good acuity and evaluated their reading performance quantitatively.
Methods
A cross-sectional, comparative, non-interventional study. Forty-nine patients with early-moderate glaucomatous visual field loss OU with visual acuity better than 1.0 in the better and 0.7 in the worse eye. Reading performance in glaucoma patients was examined by the Japanese version of the Minnesota Reading Acuity Chart (MNREAD) were compared to that of age-matched normal subjects (n = 30).
Results
The study subjects consisted of the 21 men and 28 women. The mean age was 53.3 ± 12.6 years. Diagnosis included primary open-angle glaucoma (n = 22), normal-tension glaucoma (n = 22), developmental glaucoma (n = 4) and exfoliation glaucoma (n = 1). Reading parameters of glaucoma patients examined by MNREAD were: maximum reading speed (MRS), 329.9 ± 55.4 characters per min.; critical print size (CPS), 0.24 ± 0.14 logMAR; reading acuity (RA), 0.02 ± 0.12 log MAR, significantly lower than those of normal subjects (MRS 363.0 ± 42.9, CPS 0.09 ± 0.13 logMAR, RA −0.13 ± 0.10 logMAR, P < 0.01 for three parameters by unpaired t test). CPS in glaucoma subjects was negatively correlated with mean deviation of Humphrey Field Analyzer 10-2 and 30-2 programs in the better eye (r = −0.402, P < 0.005; r = −0.304, P < 0.05; respectively, by linear regression analysis).
Conclusions
The reading performance deteriorated even in glaucoma patients with good acuity.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by “A visual function of Minamata disease, glaucoma, and central nervous system diseases” (J12J0072). The authors have full control of all primary data and agree to allow Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology to review their data upon request. This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research KAKENHI 23592556 (to Fukuchi).
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Ishii, M., Seki, M., Harigai, R. et al. Reading performance in patients with glaucoma evaluated using the MNREAD charts. Jpn J Ophthalmol 57, 471–474 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10384-013-0259-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10384-013-0259-3