About the Cat-PROM5
Cat-PROM5 asks how your eyesight in the past month affects daily life, overall vision, activities, and reading. It is designed for routine use in busy cataract services and is used in national programmes such as the National Ophthalmology Database (NOD) audit.
Medical Specialties
Clinical Indications
Developer Information
Developed by Sparrow JM, Grzeda MT, Frost NA, Johnston RL, Liu CSC, Edwards L, Loose A, Donovan JL and colleagues with NIHR Programme Grant support (RP-PG-0611-20013). Items derive from the VSQ (Donovan et al., Ophthalmic Epidemiol 2003) and VCM1 (Frost et al., Ophthalmic Epidemiol 1998).
Copyright & Licensing
Published in Eye (London); supplementary materials include the patient form. Question wording and code sets used here match the NHS Wales Data Standard Change Notice DSCN 2022/32 (Cat-PROM5 questionnaire). Verify licensing for your jurisdiction before commercial use.
Administration Instructions
If you use glasses or contact lenses for some activities, please answer according to how you can see when using them. Please think about your eyesight in the past month. The first question is about your bad eye only. The remaining questions are about your eyesight overall, using both eyes together.
Scoring Methodology
The published instrument uses a Rasch partial credit model; person measures are reported in logits (higher logits = more visual difficulty). Raw responses can be converted using Supplementary Table S3 in Sparrow et al. (2018). The National Ophthalmology Database and related communications also describe a 0-100 rescaling where higher scores represent better vision. Patient Watch stores an approximate 0-100 summary from the sum of the five ordinal item codes (maximum 21 when the reading item is scored for cataract-specific limitation): score = 100 * (1 - raw/21). This aids in-app trending but is not a substitute for the official Rasch score where audit or research requires it.
Meaningful Change Threshold
Published work reports very large responsiveness to surgery (approximately Cohen d -1.45 using baseline SD for logits). For the approximate 0-100 summary, use group-level guidance from your service or compare against published NOD/NHS materials for anchor-based interpretation.
Score Interpretation
Understanding what your score means
poor
0 - 49.99Substantial visual difficulty; interpret alongside clinical review
moderate
50 - 69.99Moderate visual difficulty
good
70 - 84.99Mild residual difficulty
excellent
85 - 100Very little self-reported visual difficulty on the approximate summary scale
Subscales
This questionnaire measures multiple dimensions
Cat-PROM5 (unidimensional) (0-100 approximate summary (higher = better vision))
Single latent trait of visual difficulty related to cataract
Clinical Limitations & Considerations
Development cohort excluded visually significant non-cataract comorbidity; scores in mixed pathology may need clinical interpretation. The reading item includes a category for inability to read for non-eye reasons; the platform summary score is not computed when that category is chosen. Official Rasch scoring requires the published look-up or appropriate IRT software.
Supporting Literature
Key validation and development studies for the Cat-PROM5
- 1
Cat-PROM5: a brief psychometrically robust self-report questionnaire instrument for cataract surgery
Sparrow JM, Grzeda MT, Frost NA, Johnston RL, Liu CSC, Edwards L, Loose A, Donovan JL
Eye (London), 2018
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This questionnaire is provided free of charge. Patient Watch charges only for platform services (data storage, automated reminders, analytics) - not for use of clinical instruments. This non-commercial model supports academic and clinical use. View full licensing disclosure