Abstract
Objectives Eyes, one of visual inspection regions, present important clues to pathological patterns including deficiency and excess patterns to the clinicians. The purpose of this study was to develop Eyes Inspection Questionnaire (EIQ) and to examine which items among the EIQ were more predictive of clinicians' determination for the deficiency and excess patterns. Methods Nine questionnaire items for Visual Inspection of Eyes were extracted through the literature review. These items were presented to the 4 Korean medical doctors who are specialized in visual inspection to conduct the Delphi method. The Korean medical doctors were asked to rate the importance of each items for the corresponding Visual Inspection of Eyes, using a Likert 5-point scale(the 3 points of importance as a cut-off point). Then, out of 75 photographs submitted to the Society of HyungSang Medicine in 2009, 30 portrait pictures were selected as samples. The samples were copied to make 60 sample pictures, and then randomly assigned to 4 clinicians. The 4 clinicians evaluated the 60 samples for excess and deficiency of the eyes and were asked to check the 6 questionnaire items. The results were recorded as 5-points-scale, and their average and standard deviations were calculated. Intra- class reliability test and multi regression test were performed using SPSS 13. Results Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was between 0.750 to 0.841 (P<0.05). Indices for visual inspection of the eyes were: endowment of the bone structure around the eyes; brightness of the eyes; upward deviation of the eyes; eye shapes; and definition of iris. 76.92% of deficiency symptom patterns and 86.42% of the excess symptom patterns matched the patterns predicted by the visual inspection of the eyes, according to the frequency analysis. According to the multiple regression analysis, were significantly related to the excessive symptoms, and to the deficiency symptoms. Conclusion This study is the first attempt of development for checklist of excess and deficiency of Visual Inspection of Eyes and quantitative measurement of excess and deficiency using the Visual Inspection of Eyes by the visual inspection experts. Still, additional studies are needed regarding the relationship visual inspection methods have with existing standards of diagnosis.
