The prevalence of visual impairment among Americans has not been assessed for several decades. Visual impairments can significantly affect the quality of life and have been found to increase the risk of fractures and other injuries. Visual impairment is defined as having a distance acuity of 20/50 or worse, where a person can't see distant objects clearly and is nearsighted. Now the U.S. National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute (NEI) reports that about 14 million Americans (about 6 percent of the population) are visually impaired. The investigators found that about 11 million of those people have vision problems that can be treated with corrective lenses and 3 million have serious medical conditions that caused their visual impairments.
The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, investigated the prevalence of visual impairment in Americans aged 12 years or older. NEI researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), including 13,265 participants aged 12 or older, between 1999 and 2002. The participants' visual acuity was measured at a mobile examination center.
The researchers found that 1,190 participants had visual impairment , and 83.3% could achieve good visual acuity with corrective lenses. The remaining 13 percent of participants had medical problems such as glaucoma or cataracts that caused their visual impairments. Findings also revealed higher rates of uncorrected visual impairment in participants who were poor, didn't have private health insurance, had diabetes, and had fewer years of education.
The study authors found that visual impairments often went uncorrected because health care was not accessible or affordable. "Visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive error is a common condition in the United States," the study authors write. "Providing appropriate refractive correction to those individuals whose vision can be improved is an important public health endeavor with implications for safety and quality of life."
REFERENCES:
1. Vitale S et al. Prevalence of Visual Impairment in the United States. JAMA 2006 May10;295(18):2158-2163.
Posted by Elaine Gavalas on September 19, 2006 02:32 PM
