Poster Title: Does Knowledge of the Causes of Glaucoma Impact Adherence?

SECTION: Glaucoma

Purpose: Although glaucoma is informally known as loss of sight due to the deterioration or damage to the optic nerve, some scientists claim to have identified the genes related to these causes. The most prevalent risk factor of glaucoma includes those who are of African descendant. We performed a prospective, clinical study to test the hypothesis that the adherence level is higher in patients who are more knowledgeable of the risk factors related to their condition (glaucoma) than those with little to no knowledge.

Methods: A dataset of the first visit from a clinical diagnosis of open-angle glaucoma was retrieved, in which all the patients used once-daily prostaglandin analog eye drops and administered it themselves. The participants were on average 60.38±9.93yrs of age and identified as African descendants; of the 29 patients, 16 self-identified as male and the rest female. Each participant filled out the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire and were specifically asked to “Please list in rank-order the three most important factors that you believe caused your illness”. Once the answers were recorded, we grouped the results into three different conditions: ⁽¹⁾ those with at least on “true” (current factors that are widely accepted scientifically) risk factors vs those with zero “true” risk factor, ⁽²⁾ those who included race as a risk factor vs those who did not, and finally ⁽³⁾ those who listed any risk factors (true of false) vs whose who did not list anything. After the responses were categorized, we compared the adherence within each condition using two-tailed t-test to calculate the “level of significance” using Microsoft Excel.

Results: Although our hypothesis was that participants with more of an understanding or knowledge of glaucoma would receive higher adherence levels than those with little to no knowledge, our results did not agree with us. The adherence t-test values returned the following results: 0.1244 for ⁽¹⁾ One TRUE vs NO TRUE, 0.3744 for ⁽²⁾ RACE vs OTHER, and 0.2516 for ⁽³⁾ R.FACTOR vs NO RF. Due to the fact that all three results were ≥ 0.05, our data displayed that there were no relationship between the two groups (within each individual condition). Most importantly, it meant that our outcomes were most likely a consequence of chance and that there were no significance in our findings.

Conclusions: Although our results were not consistent with our hypothesis (that individuals with a better understanding of their condition will score higher for adherence), we were still able to come to a different deduction: that whether or not individuals are educated on the causes of their conditions, their adherence will only improve if they decide it so.