Purpose: Dry eye disease (DED) is a common ocular disease that can have adverse effects on quality of life. Our aim was to develop a single-item questionnaire that is reliable, patient-driven, and clinic friendly to assess DED symptoms and their effect on quality of life to help support the management of patients with DED.
Methods: An initial dry eye questionnaire was created and administered to 18 patients with DED followed by a 15-minute cognitive interviewing session. This questionnaire was then refined using feedback obtained from the cognitive interview and was termed the University of North Carolina Dry Eye Management Scale (UNC DEMS). Field testing was then performed on 66 patients (46 with DED and 20 without DED) to determine the validity and test-retest reliability of the UNC DEMS compared with the current gold standard, the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI). Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between the UNC DEMS, OSDI, and other DED measures to assess criterion-related validity. Reliability coefficients were estimated for test-retest reliability.
Results: Comparing the UNC DEMS with the OSDI across all study participants, the correlation coefficient was 0.80 (P < 0.001). Comparing the UNC DEMS with the OSDI in the DED group, the correlation coefficient was 0.69 (P < 0.001). The test-retest reliability coefficient of the UNC DEMS was estimated to be 0.90.
Conclusions: The UNC DEMS is a valid, reliable questionnaire that can be efficiently administered in a busy clinical practice and can be used to support the management of patients with DED.