QUALITY OF LIFE IN GLAUCOMA KVALITET ŽIVOTA KOD GLAUKOMA

Glaucoma is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that can lead to irreversible blindness, if left untreated. There are different modalities in glaucoma treatment, but the most common include using local hypotensive eye drops. Due to the visual impairment or the use of glaucoma medication, people with glaucoma often report different difficulties in everyday life. Simple exams and assessments of clinical glaucoma parameters (like visual field) are not sufficient to describe patients' problems and needs. Therefore, the investigation of their quality of life (QOL) is indispensable in management of glaucoma patients. Quality of life in people with glaucoma is usually decreased and typically physical, psychological and social aspects are affected. Quality of life is usually evaluated with the use of patient reported outcome measures (PRO) and the most used form of PRO is questionnaire. Recently, two of the glaucoma specific questionnaires - Glaucoma Quality of life-15 and Glaucoma Symptom Scale - have been validated in the Serbian language and are available for use in glaucoma populations. The main goal of glaucoma management should be preserving patients' vision while keeping and improving their quality of life, which is the reason why QOL assessments are of a great importance in glaucoma.