Abstract
Purpose :
Smoking tobacco is a known risk factor for many eye diseases. However, the association between electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), which contain nicotine (a by-product of tobacco), and eye diseases is not fully known. The purpose of this study was to use the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to study the association between e-cigarette smoking and visual impairment.
Methods :
A population-based, cross-sectional study was performed using data from 2016-2018 BRFSS surveys. BRFSS is a nationwide telephone survey that interviews U.S. adults ages 18+ about health behaviors. E-cigarette use for tobacco was assessed by the questions: “Have you ever used an e-cigarette or other electronic vaping product, even just one time, in your entire life?” and “Do you now use e-cigarettes or other electronic vaping products every day, some days, or not at all?”. Visual impairment was defined as: “Are you blind or do you have serious difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses?”. Logistic regression was performed to assess the association between e-cigarette use and visual impairment, while controlling for the covariates of age, sex, race/ethnicity, marital status, education, employment status, family income, heavy alcohol use, BMI, physical activity, and mental health. Cigarette smoking was not included because it was highly correlated with e-cigarette use. All analyses were performed by incorporating sampling design and weights according to the BRFSS analytic guidelines.
Results :
The study included 1,173,646 total individuals. 6.2% of current e-cigarette smokers and 5.8% of former e-cigarette smokers stated they were visually impaired, as opposed to only 4.7% of never e-cigarette smokers. These are weighted percentages which BRFSS uses to more accurately represent the total population from the survey. The odds ratio of visual impairment in current e-Cigarette smokers compared to never smokers was 1.37 (95% CI, 1.14-1.64) adjusted, and 1.36 (95% CI, 1.15-1.61) unadjusted. The odds ratio of visual impairment in former e-Cigarette smokers compared to never smokers was 1.21 (95% CI, 1.09-1.35) adjusted, and 1.20 (95% CI, 1.09-1.31) unadjusted.
Conclusions :
E-cigarette smoking was associated with visual impairment in the BRFSS survey. Given the strong association between tobacco smoking and other behaviors like alcohol use, a future study is needed to determine the independent risk of e-cigarette smoking on visual impairment.
This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.