PREFERENCE VALUES FOR VISUAL STATES IN PATIENTS PLANNING TO UNDERGO CATARACT-SURGERY

To assess how preference values that cataract surgery patients assign to their preoperative visual states relate to visual acuity and proble ms in specific aspects of daily life, the authors interviewed 47 patie nts scheduled to have cataract surgery. Using a rating-scale technique with a scale from 0 (death) to 1 (excellent health), the patients had a mean preference value of 0.68 for their preoperative vision. Patien ts' preference values for their preoperative vision were more closely related to problems in specific aspects of daily life (especially feel ings of depression and problems interacting with people) than to visua l acuity in the operative eye, better eye, or worse eye, or a weighted average of visual acuities in both eyes. These results provide a rati onale for relying more on patients' views about the effects of visual impairment than on measures of visual acuity when assessing the need f or cataract surgery.