Regular articleFive-year change in visual acuity and incidence of visual impairment: the Blue Mountains Eye Study☆
Section snippets
Population
The BMES is a population-based survey of vision and common eye diseases in an urban population aged 49 years or older residing in two postal codes of the Blue Mountains region, west of Sydney, Australia. A previous report from the study explained the reasons for selecting, and the methods used to identify, the target population and described the population.21 To summarize, study personnel conducted a door-to-door census from November to December 1991 for the first postcode area and from March
Results
The mean age of participants at baseline was 64.5 years. The mean follow-up period for the 2335 BMES II participants was 5.1 years (minimum, 3.0 years; maximum, 7.8 years). Women accounted for 57.5% of subjects. Table 1 shows the baseline characteristics of participants.
Discussion
Incident figures from this report can be used to project the number of incident cases of visual impairment within the Australian population. By using population estimates for the year 2001 from the Australian Bureau of Statistics26 with our incident visual impairment figures, we estimate that in 5 years approximately 94,700 persons will develop visual impairment <20/40 in both eyes; these persons will no longer be able to obtain a driver’s license based on the current visual acuity criterion.
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2013, OphthalmologyCitation Excerpt :A cross-sectional study by Votruba et al,5 however, found no change in visual acuity with age and follow-up studies made by Cohn et al7 and Eliott et al23 found visual acuity to be unchanged within 1 Snellen line for the majority of patients. Our own study, which excluded 18 ADOA patients and 6 healthy subjects with competing causes of visual deficits, found no effect of age on visual acuity, suggesting that when effects of age have been found in previous ADOA studies, it may have been influenced by competing causes of visual deficit, such as cataract.24,25 Obviously, the present study is limited by its cross-sectional design and follow-up is very much needed, but our results indicate that it may take decades before a conclusive prospective assessment of progression rates can be made.
Risk factors for four-year incident visual impairment and blindness: The Los Angeles Latino eye study
2011, OphthalmologyCitation Excerpt :The Reykjavik Eye Study,15 Melbourne Visual Impairment Project,13 and Priverno Eye Study11 did not find any sex-related differences. In the Beaver Dam Eye Study and Barbados Eye Study, men were more likely to develop incident VI, whereas in the Blue Mountains Eye Study,10 female gender was associated only with monocular VI. The Priverno Eye Study11 also examined socioeconomic status, smoking, and alcohol consumption, but none were found to be associated with vision loss.
Five-year incidence of visual impairment and blindness in adult Chinese: The Beijing eye study
2011, OphthalmologyCitation Excerpt :Few population-based epidemiologic studies have focused on visual impairment rates in Asians, and the present investigation is the first study to be carried out in China. Previous studies have estimated prevalence and incidence rates of visual impairment on persons of European ancestry or of African ancestry.1,6,20,22–24,27,28 However, most published studies of visual impairment have focused on obtaining prevalence estimates,1,2,4–6,8,11 and only a few have collected follow-up data from their original cohort to obtain incidence estimates of visual impairment.20–33
Incidence, causes and risk factors of vision loss in rural Southern China: 6-year follow-up of the Yangxi Eye Study
2023, British Journal of Ophthalmology
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Manuscript no. 210694.
Supported by the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council, Canberra, Australia.