How crooked do I really see? Subjective and objective improvement after epiretinal membrane surgery.

Epiretinal membrane (ERM), is a visual disorder that mainly affects the elderly population. Symptoms of an epiretinal membrane include decreased visual acuity and often crooked vision, ie straight objects are perceived as crooked or distorted (metamorphosis).

Epiretinal membrane occurs in 3.4 - 34.1% of the population. Surgery gives positive results regarding objective parameters such as visual acuity and retinal thickness, however, there is a lack of knowledge about the patient's subjective experience after the procedure.

In order to gain further knowledge about the above - mentioned patient group, the individual's own experiences of living with distorted vision due to ERM will be examined through individual interviews. Also, a previously validated instrument, Metamorphopsia Questionnaire, will be translated into Swedish and reliability tested. Then we plan to perform a comparative analysis between objective measurements of visual acuity and retinal thickness, as well as the patient's own experience of hook vision measured with the Swedish version of Metamorphopsia Questionnaire. Finally, patients who have undergone surgery under local anesthesia for the epiretinal membrane will be interviewed about their experiences of being operated on while awake.