TY  - GEN
AU  - Van Newkirk, Mylan R.
AU  - Weih, LeAnn M.
AU  - McCarty, Catherine A.
AU  - Stanislavsky, Yury L.
AU  - Keeffe, Jill E.
AU  - Taylor, Hugh R.
Y2  - 2014/05/22
Y1  - 2000
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/11343/33467
AB  - Objective: To study the prevalence and distribution of visual impairment and eye diseases by age and gender in an urban institutionalized population.
                        
                    Design: Cross-sectional study.
                        
                    Participants: Four hundred three residents of nursing homes and hostels.
                        
                    Methods: Fourteen nursing homes were randomly selected from 104 nursing homes and hostels located within a 5-km radius of each of nine clusters studied in the Visual Impairment Project (VIP) urban cohort.  Participants completed a standardized orthoptic and dilated ophthalmic examination, including measurement of visual acuity and visual fields.  The major cause of vision loss was identified for participants with visual impairment.
                        
                    Main outcome measures: Presenting visual acuity and ophthalmic diagnoses.
                        
                    Results: The participants’ mean age was 82 years (standard deviation, 9.24), with an age range of 46 years to 101 years. Women outnumbered men by 318 to 85.  Seventy-one (22%) of 318 women had bilateral profound visual impairment (blindness), defined as best-corrected visual acuity <3/60 and/or visual field constriction <5° compared with 10 (12%) of 85 men.  However, this difference is not significant when age-standardized.  Age related macular degeneration was the principal diagnosis of vision loss in the better eye of 74 (44%) of the 167 participants with bilateral low vision (<6/18 and/or visual field constriction to <20° radius).  The age-adjusted rate of blindness or profound visual impairment in the VIP institutional cohort of 5.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8, 8.6) was significantly greater than in the VIP urban and rural cohorts of 0.13% (95% CI, 0, 0.25) and 0.29% (95% CI, 0, 0,57), respectively.
                        
                    Conclusion: Underestimation of visual impairment may occur in residential population-based studies that exclude institutional or residential nursing homes and hostels for the aged citizens.  Expanded methods are required for visual assessment in institutional populations.
N1  - application/pdf
LA  - eng
KW  - CERA
KW  - ophthalmology
KW  - Centre for Eye Research Australia
KW  - eye research
KW  - vision
KW  - visual health
T1  - Visual impairment and eye diseases in elderly institutionalized Australians
IS  - Ophthalmology
VL  - 107
IS  - 12
SP  - 2203-2208
L1  - /bitstream/handle/11343/33467/65559_00002641_01_visual~1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=n
ER  -