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.