Abstract
Purpose :
To assess what proportion of patients being seen in a retinal practice could possibly benefit from referral to a low vision rehabilitation clinic based on visual acuity alone.
Methods :
The records of 1017 consecutive unique patients seen over a 2 month period in a Florida retinal practice were reviewed. Patients best corrected visual acuity was recorded for each eye. Patients with visual acuity worse than 20/60 in each eye (ICD 9 category Low Vision) were noted and diagnosis recorded.
Results :
Patient age median (range) was 75 (12 – 103) years with 55% female. Best eye corrected visual acuity for all patients median (range) was 20/30 (20/12 to HM). 18% were classified as low vision based on acuity, best eye median (range) 20/80 (20/70 to HM). Of these patients 51% had exudative AMD, 16% had atrophic AMD, 14% had diabetic retinopathy and 19% had some other diagnosis.
Conclusions :
A very significant proportion of patients seen in a retinal practice are potential candidates for referral for low vision services. The majority of these patients with decreased acuity had AMD or diabetic retinopathy. These patients are likely to have significant reading problems which could be helped with low vision rehabilitation. This supports the assertion that retinal practices may be a good location to offer low vision rehabilitation services where these patients are already comfortable with receiving medical care.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.