Patients’ Experience of Using Eye Drop Guide Device to Aid Self-Administration of Glaucoma Medications

PURPOSE: To determine the characteristics of the patients who preferred using the eye drop guide (EDG) regularly and their opinions toward the guide in order to select the patients for prescribing the EDG appropriately. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Fifty-seven glaucoma patients who completed the primary study, “The effect of ‘eye drop guide’ on the success rate of eye drop self-instillation in glaucoma patients”, were included. Patients’ instillation techniques, routine instillation or using the EDG, were chosen independently. After 4–6 months, they were interviewed about the frequency of EDG use and their rating scores toward the guide in 4 aspects including aiming aids, contamination prevention, reduction of drop waste, and ease of use. The differences in opinion scores between each frequency group and the factors associated with the regularity of EDG use were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: Of fifty-seven patients completing the interview, 19.3% used the EDG everyday, while 45.6% had never used the EDG. The nonusers rated significantly lower scores in all aspects (p-value < 0.005). From multivariate analysis, the factors associated with the preference not to use the EDG were administering in supine position (p-value < 0.001, adjusted OR 34.866, 95% CI 4.974–244.412) and more than one eye drop use (p-value = 0.048, adjusted OR 5.280, 95% CI 1.018–27.396). CONCLUSION: The EDG should be selectively prescribed for the particular patients who had one medication and performed instillation in sitting or standing position. Although the regular EDG users tended to have positive opinions on the EDG, their long-term compliance with the guide was underinvestigated.