| [Background]Cataract is the leading cause of blindness in the world. Unsurgical cataract is still the most important factor leading to blindness. In Asia, Africa or some other areas, some researchers report the barriers about receiving cataract surgery, which include the high cost of surgery, lack of awareness of cataract, the fear of the pain of surgery or a worse postoperative visual acuity, traffic inconvenience, gender or age discrimination, lack of family support and a variety of constrained concepts. A recent cataract screening activities, held in China ChaoShan rural areas, showed that more than half of the elderly patients whom refused surgery claimed that I’ m too old to be suitable for surgery. In order to develop effective interventions for improving the cataract surgery rate in rural areas efficiently, in-depth researching of elderly cataract patients obstacles about the surgery is particularly important.[Objecti ve]We utilized focus groups discussion (FGD) to collect the rural elderly cataract patients’ attitudes and opinions about cataract surgery so as to understand the underlying causes of the low uptake rate of the surgery and hold the barriers about the surgery uptake among ChaoShan rural elderly cataract patients. And make the analysis of how to improve the cataract surgery rate of elderly patients to explore ways of intervention.[Materials and Methods]We recruited 20 ChaoShan patients in rural areas, who were diagnosed as cataract. Their ages were between the 60 and 86 years old. Their monocular visual acuity is less than 0. 1. We finished three thematic groups interviews. Interviews were recording in the whole process. After a short time, the recording was translated into text data, which was coded and summarized by qualitative data analysis software in follow. On the analysis of data extraction and summary until you find the best core values views and conclusions.Then, we ask participants to sort the reasons for refusing surgery, the way to understand the cataract and surgery, the measure attracting patients with surgical treatment of importance by the A (major) to F (secondary). Utilize the weighted calculation method to calculate the weighted value, the weighted ratio and the weighted average selected values in order to obtain the degree of importance of various options.[Results]Economic problems are major obstacles for elderly cataract patients receiving surgery treatment. The lack of understanding about cataract and sick awareness of their own is also play an important role of influencing the elderly people to have surgery. Some strange superstition affects elderly people to accept the surgery. Transport constraints are not prominent in the barrier. It seems that the pain and the complications of surgery don’ t play an important role in obstructing the surgery receipting.Sort the various causes of refusing surgery by important degree: " economic" ;followed by "have poor health, can’ t stand tossing surgery" ; "inconvenient" , "no one can take care me in hospital" , "fear of surgery" ; "Still not blind, no rush to do the surgery" . Sort the various ways to understand the cataract and its surgery by important degree: "friends and relatives" , "doctor or hospital distributed flyers", "TV or movie" ,"newspapers and magazines" , "radio broadcasting" , "the Internet" . Sort the various measure attracting patients with surgical treatment by importance degree: "part of the cost reduction" , "provides convenient transportation" ,"to help hospital Chaperone" , "exchange with the pro-surgery patients" ,"watch surgery videos" .[Conelusions] Utilize focus groups to investigate barriers to surgery uptake among old cataract patients in ChaoShan rural region and verify the application of focus group interviews could be the feasibility of the old population. Through focus group interviews to understand the constraints of rural elderly patients with surgical treatment that provide the basis for the development of appropriate interventions and effective solutions. |
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