Abstract
Purpose :
Japan is considered to be one of the most super-aged country in the world. Dementia is one of the most notable disease associated with increasing age, and it lead to social difficulties, care problems, and poorer quality of life. Cataract surgery improves the visual acuity and increases the overall luminance of light on the retina. Previous studies suggested that both light exposure and visual acuity were associated with cognitive function. But the relationships between cataract surgery and cognitive function have not been examined in a large population.
Methods :
This was a population based, cross sectional study conducted in 2012 in Nara, Japan and named the Fujiwara-Kyo study. The subjects were 2764 elderly individuals ≥68-years-of-age. We determined the cataract surgery history using a self-reported questionnaire. The cognitive function was evaluated with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) by trained clinical psychologists, and a cognitive impairment was defined as an MMSE score <27.
Results :
The mean±SD age was 76.3±4.8 years. There were 668 subjects in the cataract surgery group, and a cognitive impairment was observed in 311 of them. Multivariate logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, hypertension, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, education history, and depression showed that the cataract surgery group had significantly lower odds ratio for cognitive impairment than the no cataract surgery group (odds ratio, 0.82; 95% confidence interval, 0.68 to 0.99; P=0.042).
Conclusions :
Our results demonstrated that undergoing cataract surgery is significantly associated with better cognitive function in the elderly.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.