Glaucoma, stroke caused most visual field loss in elderly population

Glaucoma was the leading cause of visual field loss in people aged 55 years and older, according to a report from the Rotterdam Study. Stroke was the second most common cause of field loss in patients younger than 75 years old, the study authors found. The 5-year risk of developing visual field loss increased fivefold for people aged 75 years and older compared with people aged 55 years and older.

Elisa Skenduli-Bala, MD, and colleagues examined the incidence of visual field loss in participants in the Rotterdam Study, a population-based, prospective cohort study of all residents at least 55 years old living in the Danish city. After baseline exams conducted from 1990 to 1993, follow-up exams that included suprathreshold perimetry were performed from 1997 to 1999.

Of 5,996 noninstitutionalized participants who had no visual field loss at the start of the ophthalmic portion of the study, after a mean follow-up of 6.3 years, 240 eyes of 175 people developed field loss. The overall rate of incident visual field loss was 7.4 per 1,000 person-years. This increased to 21.1 per 1,000 person-years in those who were at least 80 years old.

After open-angle glaucoma, stroke was the second most common cause of visual loss in participants younger than 75 years old. These were followed by age-related macular degeneration and retinal vascular occlusive disease as leading causes of visual loss.

“Our findings demonstrate that the overall incidence of VF loss for persons aged 55 years and older increases significantly with age and is higher for men than for women,” the authors reported in the February issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.