The Impact of Diplopia on Reading

Successful treatment of diplopia using prism correction combined with vision therapy/orthoptics improves health-related quality of life

Background

To track improvement in diplopia symptoms with strabismus-specific health-related quality of life (HRQOL) questionnaire across a treatment consisting of prism correction followed by vision therapy/orthoptics when prism treatment alone has not succeeded.

Methods

Forty-eight participants with diplopia and a mean age of 62.45 were asked to complete an Adult Strabismus-20 (AS-20) questionnaire and a Diplopia Questionnaire (DQ) before and after prism correction. Inclusion criteria were diplopia reported on the DQ as "sometimes", "often" or "always" at reading or straight-ahead distance. The prism correction was classified as successful if the participant reported "never" or "rarely" on the DQ for reading and straight-ahead distance; and unsuccessful if the perceived diplopia worsened or remained the same. For all participants, mean initial AS-20 scores were compared with mean post-prism correction scores, taking into account AS-20 subscales (reading and general functions, and self-perception and interaction). Participants in the failed prism treatment subgroup subsequently underwent a programme of vision therapy wearing their prism correction, the results of which were again determined by participants' responses on the AS-20 questionnaire, completed before and after the vision therapy.

Results

Five of the 48 participants dropped out of the study. Prism correction was classified as successful in 22 of 43 participants (51%), and unsuccessful in 21 (49%). Those participants for whom the prism correction was classified as a success showed a statistically significant improvement (p = 0.01) in both reading and general functions. In the failed treatment subgroup, no significant change in AS-20 score was recorded for any of the domains (p = 0.1). After treatment with vision therapy/orthoptics, however, 13 of the 20 participants in the unsuccessful prism correction subgroup (one of them dropped out the study) achieved binocular vision and statistically significant improvement in reading and general functions (p = 0.01).

Conclusions

Although effective prism correction of diplopia is correlated with enhanced HRQOL, prism correction alone is frequently not sufficient to achieve this objective. In these cases, vision therapy/orthoptics treatment as a coadjutant to prism correction is shown to improve HRQOL.