Validation and Repeatability of a hort Quetionnaire for Dry Eye yndrome Original Reearch Article

Purpoe To clinically validate and acertain the repeatability of a hort quetionnaire for dry eye yndrome (DE), coniting of two quetion pertaining to ymptom (dryne and irritation) and one quetion regarding previou hitory of clinically diagnoed DE. Deign Clinical validation tudy with repeated aement. Method A hort quetionnaire for DE wa adminitered to participant of two large cohort tudie, the Women’ Health tudy (WH) and the Phyician’ Health tudy (PH). A upplementary quetionnaire compriing 16 quetion pertaining to ymptom wa mailed to a ubet of 450 WH and 240 PH participant, elected o that a third of thee ubject had DE baed on their repone to the hort quetionnaire. Repeatability of the dryne and irritation ymptom quetion wa acertained uing intracla correlation coefficient (ICC). tandardized ophthalmologic examination wa performed on 53 ubject. enitivity and pecificity of the hort quetionnaire wa determined uing a combination of clinical tet to define clinical DE. Reult An ICC of 0.75 for dryne and 0.65 for irritation wa found between ubequent meaurement. Participant’ repone to the dryne and irritation quetion were highly correlated (r = 0.75) with a core derived from repone to the longer 16-ymptom quetionnaire. The hort quetionnaire for DE had a enitivity of 77% and pecificity of 83% when cutoff point for clinical DE wa chirmer 1 value ≤10 mm or tear breakup time <10 econd. Concluion The hort quetionnaire for DE i a enitive and repeatable tool that i eay to adminiter in large epidemiologic reearch tudie a well a clinical reearch.