The Quality of Life Impact of Refractive Correction

The quality of life impact of refractive correction (QIRC) was developed to measure the impact your choice of vision correction has on your overall quality of life. It was originally designed using patients from the presbyopic age group, although the designers did not comment on the degree its subjects actually suffered from presbyopia. Although the authors note the limitation of designing the questionnaire for the presbyopic age group, many people use the QIRC to measure the impact of various refractive procedures, such as laser vision correction procedures like LASIK or PRK.

The QIRC is made up of 20 questions designed to evaluate how various vision correction options affect people's quality of life. It was developed from 2002-2004. The QIRC originally contained 90 items that were winnowed down to the 20 items most likely to produce consistent results that correlated with other evaluations of a person's quality of life. It includes questions related to four basic categories of quality of life: convenience, economic issues, health concerns, and general well-being. Refractive surgery patients generally show improvement in 15 of the 20 categories when given the QIRC before and after laser vision correction surgery. The largest difference was related to convenience factors like being inconvenienced by glasses or contacts when swimming or going to the gym. Another factor that showed major improvement is that people felt they would grow increasingly to rely on glasses or contacts, whereas they felt their refractive surgery freed them from dependence.

People taking the QIRC generally show a better quality of life if they have had refractive surgery than if they were using glasses or contacts. The average QIRC score for LASIK patients was 50.23, which was significantly higher than either contact lens wearer (46.7) or glasses wearers (44.13). Some people boast that the QIRC shows how much higher the quality of life is for people with LASIK than with glasses, but it seems to have been designed intentionally to highlight the changes effected by LASIK.

Which is not to say that LASIK does not lead to real quality of life improvements. To learn more about LASIK, please contact a local ophthalmologist today.