RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Incidence, causes and risk factors of vision loss in rural Southern China: 6-year follow-up of the Yangxi Eye Study
JF British Journal of Ophthalmology
JO Br J Ophthalmol
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.
SP 1190
OP 1196
DO 10.1136/bjophthalmol-2021-320892
VO 107
IS 8
A1 Zhao, Xinyu
A1 Lin, Jianqiang
A1 Yu, Shanshan
A1 Xie, Liqiong
A1 Jin, Ling
A1 Xiong, Kun
A1 Tsui, Ching-Kit
A1 Xu, Yue
A1 Wu, Benjuan
A1 Liu, Bin
A1 Wang, Wei
A1 Congdon, Nathan
A1 Huang, Wenyong
A1 He, Mingguang
A1 Liang, Xiaoling
YR 2023
UL http://bjo.bmj.com/content/107/8/1190.abstract
AB Purpose To report the 6-year incidence, causes and risk factors for vision loss (visual impairment (VI) and blindness), among elderly adults in rural southern China.Methods Population-based, cohort study. Initiated in 2014, the study recruited participants aged 50 and older using random cluster sampling from Yangxi County. All eligible participants were invited to attend interviews and comprehensive eye examinations at the 6-year follow-up between November 2020 and March 2021. The WHO categories of vision loss were used to define incident cases of VI (3/60≤VA <6/12), moderate-to-severe VI (MSVI) (3/60≤VA<6/18) and blindness (VA <3/60) in the better-seeing eye.Results Among the 5825 baseline participants, 3187 (64.4%) of 4946 surviving subjects participated in the 6-year follow-up. Based on presenting and best-corrected VA, respectively, the crude incidence rate of blindness was 0.8% (95% CI 0.5% to 1.1%) vs 0.3% (95% CI 0.1% to 0.5%), for MSVI 6.7% (95% CI 5.7% to 7.6%) vs 4.6% (95% CI 3.8% to 5.4%) and for any VI 16.1% (95% CI 14.5% to 17.6%) vs 12.9% (95% CI 11.6% to 14.1%). Cataract (48.3%) and refractive errors (44.4%) were the most common causes of vision loss. Factors significantly associated with greater incident vision loss were older age, female sex, less education, living alone and longer axial length (all p<0.05).Conclusions Substantial work is still required to reduce avoidable vision loss in rural China. Screening outreach and efforts to improve awareness which target the poorer and less educated are urgently needed to reduce the growing unmet need for eye care due to ageing.Data are available on reasonable request. The data sets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.