Influence of uncorrected refractive error and unmet refractive error on visual impairment in a Brazilian population

BMC Ophthalmology

Research Article

José E Corrente¹  Silvana A Schellini²  Fabio H Ferraz²  Paula Opromolla² 

[1] Biostatistics Department, Instituto de Biociências de Botucatu, Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP, Botucatu, Brazil;Ophthalmology Department, Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu, Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP, Cep: 18618-970, Botucatu, SP, Brazil;

关键词: Blindness;    Visual impairment;    Spectacles;    Refractive errors;    URE;    UREN;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2415-14-84

 received in 2014-01-08, accepted in 2014-06-19,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe World Health Organization (WHO) definitions of blindness and visual impairment are widely based on best-corrected visual acuity excluding uncorrected refractive errors (URE) as a visual impairment cause. Recently, URE was included as a cause of visual impairment, thus emphasizing the burden of visual impairment due to refractive error (RE) worldwide is substantially higher. The purpose of the present study is to determine the reversal of visual impairment and blindness in the population correcting RE and possible associations between RE and individual characteristics.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in nine counties of the western region of state of São Paulo, using systematic and random sampling of households between March 2004 and July 2005. Individuals aged more than 1 year old were included and were evaluated for demographic data, eye complaints, history, and eye exam, including no corrected visual acuity (NCVA), best corrected vision acuity (BCVA), automatic and manual refractive examination. The definition adopted for URE was applied to individuals with NCVA > 0.15 logMAR and BCVA ≤ 0.15 logMAR after refractive correction and unmet refractive error (UREN), individuals who had visual impairment or blindness (NCVA > 0.5 logMAR) and BCVA ≤ 0.5 logMAR after optical correction.ResultsA total of 70.2% of subjects had normal NCVA. URE was detected in 13.8%. Prevalence of 4.6% of optically reversible low vision and 1.8% of blindness reversible by optical correction were found. UREN was detected in 6.5% of individuals, more frequently observed in women over the age of 50 and in higher RE carriers. Visual impairment related to eye diseases is not reversible with spectacles. Using multivariate analysis, associations between URE and UREN with regard to sex, age and RE was observed.ConclusionRE is an important cause of reversible blindness and low vision in the Brazilian population.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ferraz et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.