Abstract
Purpose :
To investigate the association between visual acuity and subsequent myocardial infarction, stroke and death.
Methods :
This is a retrospective cohort study using Korean National Health Insurance System (NHIS). Total 9,974,787 subjects over 20 years old without previous history of myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke, and experienced a National Health Screening Program (NHSP) at least one time between 1st January 2009 and 31th December 2012 were included in the study. Patients were categorized into 5 groups according to their visual acuity examined at NHSP; visual acuity greater or equal to 1.5 decimal (group1), visual acuity from 1.0 to 1.4 decimal (group2), visual acuity from 0.5 to 0.9 (group3), visual acuity from 0.1 to 0.4 (group 4), and visual acuity less than 0.1 (group 5). All subject were monitored for MI, stroke development, and death until 31th December 2015. A multivariate adjusted cox regression analysis were employed to reveal hazard ratio (HR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI) for MI, stroke development, and death according to visual acuity adjusting age, sex, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, body mass index (BMI), drinking habit, smoking status, amount of physical activity, and income.
Results :
The adjusted HRs of MI development by visual acuity were 1.021 (95% CI, 0.994–1.049) in group 2, 1.093 (95% CI, 1.065–1.122) in group 3, 1.197 (95% CI, 1.160–1.234) in group 4, and 1.381 (95% CI, 1.328–1.435) in group 5, setting group 1 as reference. The adjusted HRs of stroke development according to visual acuity were 1.107 (95% CI, 1.076–1.140) in group 2, 1.226 (95% CI, 1.192–1.261) in group 3, 1.420 (95% CI, 1.376–1.465) in group 4, and 1.517 (95% CI, 1.462–1.575) in group 5. The adjusted HRs of death were 1.026 (95% CI, 1.004–1.049) in group 2, 1.115 (95% CI, 1.092–1.138) in group 3, 1.374 (95% CI, 1.343–1.406) in group 4, and 1.785 (95% CI, 1.740–1.831) in group 5.
Conclusions :
We reported a nationwide, population-based cohort study of South Korean highlighting the association of visual acuity and MI, stroke development, and death. Those who have low vision have increased risk of cardiovascular disease and death.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.