Abstract
Presentation Description :
Vision impairment (VI) is a major public health concern among elderly adults worldwide, placing a heavy burden on the individual and society in terms of disability, quality of life (QoL), and economic costs. People worldwide are living longer and, by 2050, the world’s population aged ≥60 years will double to reach ~2 billion individuals. Today, 125 million people are aged ≥80 years. Our understanding of the patient-centred impact of ocular pathologies and associated VI is however limited. Using a population based cohort (N>10,000), our work found the prevalence of VI to be more than three times higher among adults aged ≥70 years compared to younger adults. However, while those with VI had significantly poorer vision-specific functioning (VSF) compared to their normally-sighted counterparts (11%), the decrement in VSF was similar across all age groups. Interestingly, when we considered incident VI (20.1%), we found that the relative reduction in VSF systematically increased with age. For example, compared to those who were normally sighted at both baseline and follow-up, those with incident VI aged <55 years (11%), 50 to <65 years (21%), and ≥65 years (36%) had 9%, 15% and 21% reductions in VSF, respectively.
However, the major shortcoming of current published literature is the small representation of the very old i.e., those aged 75 years and above. There is also a lack of holistic QoL data which include emotional and social functioning, as well as the QoL impact of other components of the visual function system including contrast sensitivity, stereo acuity and colour discrimination and their interaction with multi-morbidity. Therefore, to understand the true impact of VI among older adults, comprehensive research into the oldest old is needed. We currently have an epidemiological, nationally-representative, population-based study ongoing in Singapore – the Epidemiology, PreventiOn and InterVentIon for Eye Diseases in the Elderly (PROVIDE) – which aims to explore the epidemiology of eye diseases, VI, and the visual function system; and their patient-centred and economic impact in >3000 Singaporeans aged ≥60 years. During this SIG, we hope to present some preliminary data from PROVIDE on the impact of VI (including all aspects of visual function system) on our elderly cohort’s QoL, including mobility, independence, and emotional-wellbeing.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.