Insight Into Quality of Life in Patients With Moderate to Severe Thyroid Eye Disease

Carter discusses the quality of life in patients with moderate to severe thyroid eye disease. Quality of life is a key concept in assessing the consequences of having a medical condition. Although physical examination and testing can provide objective measures of the disease, they do not inform how the patient feels about the condition or the effect on everyday life. To address this issue, both general and disease-centric instruments are becoming increasingly used as patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) with at least 160 disease-focused instruments regularly used in the fields of ophthalmology and optometry. Smith et al report on their endeavors to measure utility in thyroid eye disease (TED), a condition that involves chronic mild to severe symptoms of diplopia and proptosis.