Nutritional and Smoking Advice to Patients With or At Risk of Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) by Optometrists in Singapore

Abstract

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause for visual impairment and blindness registration in developed countries. AMD is multi-factorial and oxidative stress has been identified as one of the main contributary factors, hence researchers propounded to investigate factors such as smoking and diet modification or nutritional supplementation to maintain or prevent the condition from deteriorating. Despite some conflict regarding nutritional research for AMD, provision of appropriate nutritional and smoking advice is important with regard to reducing risk of progression to sight loss related to AMD. This study explored the nutritional and smoking advice to patients with or at risk of AMD by Singapore optometrists via a questionnaire and is the first in Asia to do so. In addition, it analyzed the confidence levels of Singapore optometrists while providing nutritional advice to AMD patients via a self-efficacy survey. The results of the study show that 52.9% of the respondents provide dietary advice to patients with advanced AMD at least 80% of the time and 54.1% would advise AMD patients to stop smoking. When providing nutritional advice to AMD patients, the number of years of experience do not affect the confidence levels of Singapore optometrists and most of them are not confident in advising the amount of foods to consume that are beneficial for their patients. The prevalence of AMD is anticipated to rise; therefore our results highlighted the importance of more Singapore optometrists providing nutritional and smoking advice to all their AMD patients by providing some form of assistance such as utilizing clinical decision-making tools.