Comment on assessment of quality of life in glaucoma patients in a tertiary care center in Eastern India

Dear Editor, We went through the article titled "Assessment of quality of life in glaucoma patients in a tertiary care center in Eastern India" by Sen et al.[1] This is a nicely conducted study, and we congratulate the authors for their publication. We have a few observations. The authors used literacy and income levels to assess the patients' socioeconomic status in the study. The patients have been arbitrarily classified into literate and illiterate groups. Knowing the cut-off point used to decide if the patient is illiterate will be good. Similarly, from the income point of view, patients have been divided into those below and above the poverty line. It will be informative for the readers to know again the cut-off income levels used to decide whether a patient is below or above the poverty line. These should have been clearly mentioned in the methodology. Various scales like revised Kuppuswamy, BG Prasad, and Udai Pareek are used to assess patients' socioeconomic status.[2] These scales also include the patient's occupation in determining socioeconomic status. The present study should also have included the occupation in the socioeconomic status assessment. It would have been informative to know how the disease and its management affect the patient in discharging his/her duties at the workplace. Visual acuity, intraocular pressure, and disease severity are the three parameters used to study the effect of glaucoma on quality of life (QOL). The duration of the disease or course of treatment could also have been used to study its impact on QOL. Some other parameters can also be included to assess the QOL scores. Glaucoma is a chronic disease; the patient must be on lifelong treatment and must visit the hospital at frequent intervals. The condition is often not controlled by a single drug, and the patient needs to be treated with multiple medications. All these tend to increase the medical expenditure of the patients. These parameters, like monthly expenditure on glaucoma medications, access to a hospital, frequent visits, etc., can be additionally used to determine QOL. These parameters also play a significant role in determining the patient's compliance with the treatment advised. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.