This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
AMD the leading cause of visual impairment found in older Britons
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Age-related macular degeneration was the most common cause of visual impairment found in a sample of older people in Great Britain. A large percentage of the visual impairment found in the study was due to treatable conditions, the study authors found.
Ms. Jennifer R. Evens conducted the study with colleagues at the Institute of Ophthalmology in London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The researchers used data collected in the MRC Trial of the Assessment and Management of Older People in the Community, in which trial nurses tested the visual acuities of everyone aged 75 years or older at 53 general practices in Britain.
Visual impairment was defined as visual acuity of 6/18 or worse. Data on the causes of vision loss were extracted from the medical records of 49 of the 53 practices, and questionnaires were sent to hospital ophthalmologists to confirm the causes.
According to the study, 1,742 people (12.5% of participants) were visually impaired. Of these, 450 (26%) had pinhole visual acuities of 6/18 or better in either eye, and in these patients the principal cause of visual impairment was assumed to be refractive error.
In the remaining 1,292 visually impaired people, the cause of vision loss was available for 976 (76%). The main cause of vision loss in these patients was age-related macular degeneration in 52.9%, cataract in 35.9%, glaucoma in 11.6%, myopic degeneration in 4.2% and diabetic eye disease in 3.4%.
The authors noted that data on the causes of visual impairment among older persons in Britain are needed to develop health service and research priorities. Their finding that AMD was responsible for much of the visual impairment highlights the growing importance of low vision services, they concluded.
The study is published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.