Abstract
Purpose :
There have been few detailed large-scale studies which have analyzed the number of prescriptions of single vision and bifocal contact lenses (CL) by age group. Therefore, a thirteen year large-scale follow-up study was undertaken to analyze approximately 102,000 eyes of Japanese subjects who were prescribed CL because of ametropia or accommodative dysfunction, ordered by age group.
Methods :
The subject of this study is the 1,023,292 eyes (single vision: 964,753 eyes, age 40 to 100, bifocal vision: 58,539 eyes, age 40 to 81) of Japanese subjects in the 40 to 100 year age range, prescribed CL to correct ametropia and accommodative dysfunction. Prescriptions were made at the Okada eye clinic in Kanagawa, Japan between April, 2002 and December, 2014.
Results :
Analysis of type of CL and age group shows that single vision CL were prescribed most often to the 40-49 year age group (689,591 eyes (67.39%) : SCL 645,315 eyes (63.06%), HCL 44,276 eyes (4.33%)), followed by the 50-59 year age group (230,371 eyes (22.51%) : SCL 204,398 eyes (19.97%), HCL 25,973 eyes (2.54%)), and 60-69 year age group (41,316 eyes (4.04%) : SCL 34,190 eyes (3.34%), HCL 7,126 eyes (0.70%)). The number of CL wearers decreased as the subjects aged.
On the other hand, the users of the bifocal CL increased from the 40-49 year age group (17,695 eyes (1.73%): SCL 15,852 eyes (1.55%), HCL 1,843 eyes (0.18%)) to the 50-59 year age group (34,224 eyes (3.34%): SCL 31,501 eyes (3.08%), HCL 2,723 eyes (0.27%)), but in the age group. In the 60-69 year age group the number of CL wearers decreased dramatically(6,373 eyes (80.62%), SCL 5,848eyes (0.57%）HCL 525 eyes (0.05%)). Additionally, the number of HCL prescribed made up only 0.5% of total prescriptions, and only 0.27% in the most prescribed to age group, 50-59 years old.
Conclusions :
Analysis of the number of prescriptions of CL by age group shows that 94.28% were single vision CL (SCL 86.65%, HCL 7.63%), with bifocal CL making up only 5.72% (SCL 5.22%, HCL 0.50%). Interestingly, prescriptions of bifocal HCL were very few (less than 0.3% in the most prescribed to age group, 50-59 years old). The improvement of bifocal HCL is suggested.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.