Abstract
Purpose :
Historical studies of the incidence of retinal diseases have yielded heterogeneous estimates and have been drawn from disparate countries over non-overlapping time periods. An updated estimate of the current incidence and prevalence of retinal diseases in the United States would be a valuable addition to the epidemiologic literature.
Methods :
Retrospective study of electronic medical records from Vestrum Health Retina Database, a geographically diverse sample of retina providers in the United States. Eyes with diagnosis code for wet and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic macular edema (DME), diabetic retinopathy (DR), branch or central retinal vein occlusion (BRVO; CRVO) between January 2014 and December 2018 across 57 retina practices were evaluated to characterize the types of patients being examined at these practices.
Results :
Our sample comprised over 5 million eyes. Of all the eyes examined during this period, 689,161 (13.3%) had wet AMD, 852,390 (16.4%) had dry AMD, 512,100 (9.9%) had DME, 411,374 (7.9%) had DR without DME, 134,192 (2.6%) had BRVO and 92,578 (1.8%) had CRVO. Similar distributions were observed when examined geographically (Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and West). New diagnoses amongst this study population are provided in Table 1.
Conclusions :
Based on geographically diverse database of electronic medical records from retina clinics in the United States, AMD is the most common diagnosis (~30%) followed by diabetic eye disease (~17%). Over a 5-year period, the annual incidence of the most common retinal diseases evaluated in this study continued to increase across the retina practices included in this analysis.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.