OBJECTIVES: At present, maculopathy has become the main eye disease causing visual impairment and blindness in many countries. Intraocular injection has been widely used in the treatment of this disease. However, due to the complexity of its treatment, the patient's treatment compliance has become an important factor affecting the therapeutic effect. As understanding patients’ preference is crucial to this, and there is not study in Chinese context yet, our study aims to fill this gap.

METHODS: One focus group including patients with maculopathy who had received at least one intraocular injection (n=6) and one in-depth semi-structured interview were conducted. The interview was audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed.

RESULTS: A total of 59 codes and 12 themes were generated. There were two categories of factors affecting the treatment compliance of patients with maculopathy. One was specific preference elements, including frequency of injections, frequency of visits, and cost of treatment. The other was influencing factors of preference, including treatment experience, efficacy (disease improvement and disease control), linguistic expression, doctor-patient relationship, diagnosis results, Medical experience (hospital traffic, the complexity and familiarity of the medical treatment process, distance between residence and hospital and the perfection of medical resources), personal situation (individual symptomatic presentation, personal reimbursement and improvement of condition), policies, and the trade-off between price and efficacy.

CONCLUSIONS: This study presents a picture of Chinese maculopathy patients’ preference factors, which would support the exploration of improving patients compliance from the aspects patients care.