Publication date:
Abstract
Globally, more than 250 million people live with visual acuity loss or blindness, and people in the US fear losing vision more than memory, hearing, or speech. But it appears there are no recent empirical estimates of visual acuity loss or blindness for the US.
Objective
To produce estimates of visual acuity loss and blindness by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and US state.
Data Sources
Data from the American Community Survey (2017), National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999-2008), and National Survey of Children’s Health (2017), as well as population-based studies (2000-2013), were included.
Study Selection
All relevant data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System were included.
May 14, 2021
Shifting demographics, aging are factors
Uncorrectable visual acuity loss and blindness were a greater burden in the U.S. than prior estimates suggested, a Bayesian meta-analysis found.
In 2017, an estimated 7.08 million people had visual acuity loss defined as a best-corrected Snellen score of 20/40 or worse, reported Abraham Flaxman, PhD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and co-authors. Of those, 1.08 million people were living with blindness (20/200 or worse), they wrote in
Earlier estimates from the 2010 Vision Problems in the United States (VPUS) study reported uncorrectable visual impairment or blindness prevalence for people age 40 years or older as 4.2 million persons, with blindness in about 1.3 million.
New Study Identifies More People with Vision Loss and Blindness Than Previously Estimated
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Prevent Blindness is supporting the release today of an important new study Prevalence of Visual Acuity Loss or Blindness in the US, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NORC at the University of Chicago, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. It finds that more than 7 million people are living with uncorrectable vision loss, including more than 1 million Americans who are living with blindness.
Researchers find more than 7 million people are living with uncorrectable vision loss, including more than 1 million Americans who are living with blindness.