Abstract
Purpose: :
To assess the prevalence and associated risk factors of high myopic maculopathy (HMM) in an elderly Chinese population in Taiwan.
Methods: :
The Shihpai Eye Study was a survey of vision and ocular disease among an elderly Chinese population 65 years of age or older residing in Shihpai, Taipei, Taiwan. Of the 1361 participants who underwent a detailed ophthalmic examination, 1058 subjects had at least one gradable fundus photographs and were recruited for analysis. High myopia was defined as spherical equivalent of less than -6.0 D in the phakic eyes or when macula showed typical high myopic fundus in pseudophakic or aphakic eyes. HMM was defined as appearance of lacquer cracks (M3), focal area of deep choroidal atrophy (M4) and macular choroidal neovascularization or geographic atrophy (M5).
Results: :
The prevalence of high myopia is 4.6% (46/1058) and for these 46 high myopic subjects, 33 (67.3%) participants had HMM. Subjects with HMM had higher systolic blood pressure than those high myopics without maculopathy (145.8+16.4mmHg vs. 129.3+15.1mmHg, p=0.012) after multivariate adjustment of age, sex, smoking, BMI, educational levels, histories of hypertension or diabetes. In the 27 high myopic phakic eyes, the 14 eyes with maculopathy were associated with lower spherical equivalent (-13.8+4.6 D vs. -7.7+1.5 D, p<0.0001) and lower corrected visual acuity (6/83 vs. 6/11, p=0.103) than those without maculopathy. Eyes with M5 had lower visual acuity (6/173) than those with M4 (6/15, p=001) or M3 (6/21, p=0.003), respectively.
Conclusions: :
The prevalence of high myopia as well as HMM in our elderly Chinese population is higher than other population-based studies. Risk factors analysis suggests that control of high systolic blood pressure may prevent the progression of severe high myopic maculopathy.
Keywords: myopia • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: risk factor assessment