The Impact of Successful Cataract Surgery on Quality of Life, Household Income and Social Status in South India

Robert P Finger, David G Kupitz, Eva Fenwick, Bharath Balasubramaniam, Ramanathan V Ramani, Frank G Holz and Clare E Gilbert

PLOS ONE, 2012, vol. 7, issue 8, 1-7

Abstract: Background: To explore the hypothesis that sight restoring cataract surgery provided to impoverished rural communities will improve not only visual acuity and vision-related quality of life (VRQoL) but also poverty and social status. Methods: Participants were recruited at outreach camps in Tamil Nadu, South India, and underwent free routine manual small incision cataract surgery (SICS) with intra-ocular lens (IOL) implantation, and were followed up one year later. Poverty was measured as monthly household income, being engaged in income generating activities and number of working household members. Social status was measured as rates of re-marriage amongst widowed participants. VRQoL was measured using the IND-VFQ-33. Associations were explored using logistic regression (SPSS 19). Results: Of the 294 participants, mean age ± standard deviation (SD) 60±8 years, 54% men, only 11% remained vision impaired at follow up (67% at baseline; p

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0044268 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 44268&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0044268

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044268

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().