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Sports participation and quality of life in individuals with visual impairment

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Abstract

Background

The positive effects of sports participation on health can be an important issue for rehabilitation of visually impaired individuals.

Aims

Our aim was to determine the relationship between sports participation and quality of life in individuals with visual impairment.

Methods

The study included 100 athletes who participated in national games for people with visual impairment and 100 subjects who did not participate in sports as the control group. The two groups were matched according to age, gender, visual acuity and visual field. The Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) was applied for assessment of quality of life.

Results

All subjects had best corrected visual acuity less than 6/60 and/or visual field less than central 10 degrees in radius in the better eye. The sociodemographic characteristics of the study and control groups were similar except the level of education being higher in the athlete group and level of income higher in the control group. All of the SF-36 scores were higher among athletes compared to controls. Duration of sports activities (years) was positively correlated with Physical Functioning score. There were no significant relations between SF-36 scores and weekly sports participation time (hours). Athletes who had visual loss at an earlier age had better scores in Physical Functioning and Role Limitations due to Physical Problems.

Conclusions

Sports activities had positive relationships with all domains of the quality of life in individuals with visual impairment. Thus, appropriate sports activities would increase the success of rehabilitation programs and their quality of life.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank executive committee and personnel of Turkish Blind Sports Federation, directors and members of the societies “Altı Nokta Körler Derneği” and “Gören Kalpler Derneği”, societies for low vision in Turkey.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Health Ankara Ulucanlar Eye Education and Research Hospital, University of Health Sciences, Ulucanlar caddesi No: 59, 06250, Altindag, Ankara, Turkey

    Bayazit Ilhan

  2. Faculty of Medicine Department of Ophthalmology, Vision Research and Low Vision Rehabilitation Center, Ankara University, Mamak Caddesi, Mamak, Ankara, Turkey

    Aysun Idil

  3. Faculty of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, Ankara University, Mamak Caddesi, Mamak, Ankara, Turkey

    Inci Ilhan

Authors
  1. Bayazit Ilhan
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  2. Aysun Idil
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  3. Inci Ilhan
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Bayazit Ilhan. Analyses were performed by all the authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Bayazit Ilhan, and all the authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bayazit Ilhan.

Ethics declarations

Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Ankara University, Faculty of Medicine. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Informed consent was obtained from parents for participants aged less than 18 years.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This study was presented partly as a poster in 2016 European Association for Vision and Eye Research (EVER) Conference, October 5–8, 2016, Nice.

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Ilhan, B., Idil, A. & Ilhan, I. Sports participation and quality of life in individuals with visual impairment. Ir J Med Sci 190, 429–436 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-020-02285-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-020-02285-5

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