Visual impairment is associated with physical and mental comorbidities in older adults: a cross-sectional study

BMC Medicine

Daniel J Smith²  Stewart W Mercer³  Bruce Guthrie¹  Gary McLean³  Helen Court² 

[1] Primary Care Medicine, Quality, Safety and Informatics Research Group, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK;Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Mental Health and Wellbeing Research Group, 1st floor Administration Building, Gartnavel Royal Hospital, 1055 Great Western Road, Glasgow G12 0XH, Scotland, UK;General Practice & Primary Care, 1 Horslethill Road, Glasgow G12 9LX, Scotland, UK

关键词: Primary care;    Comorbidity;    Visual impairment;   

Others  :  1123232
DOI  :  10.1186/s12916-014-0181-7

 received in 2014-07-07, accepted in 2014-09-10,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Visual impairment is common in older people and the presence of additional health conditions can compromise health and rehabilitation outcomes. A small number of studies have suggested that comorbities are common in visual impairment; however, those studies have relied on self-report and have assessed a relatively limited number of comorbid conditions.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of a dataset of 291,169 registered patients (65-years-old and over) within 314 primary care practices in Scotland, UK. Visual impairment was identified using Read Code ever recorded for blindness and/or low vision (within electronic medical records). Prevalence, odds ratios (from prevalence rates standardised by stratifying individuals by age groups (65 to 69 years; 70 to 74; 75 to 79; 80 to 84; and 85 and over), gender and deprivation quintiles) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) of 37 individual chronic physical/mental health conditions and total number of conditions were calculated and compared for those with visual impairment to those without.

Results

Twenty seven of the 29 physical health conditions and all eight mental health conditions were significantly more likely to be recorded for individuals with visual impairment compared to individuals without visual impairment, after standardising for age, gender and social deprivation. Individuals with visual impairment were also significantly more likely to have more comorbidities (for example, five or more conditions (odds ratio (OR) 2.05 95% CI 1.94 to 2.18)).

Conclusions

Patients aged 65 years and older with visual impairment have a broad range of physical and mental health comorbidities compared to those of the same age without visual impairment, and are more likely to have multiple comorbidities. This has important implications for clinical practice and for the future design of integrated services to meet the complex needs of patients with visual impairment, for example, embedding depression and hearing screening within eye care services.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Court et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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