Abstract
Purpose :
Race/ethnicity, insurance type, and socioeconomic status have been shown to impact amblyopia care. We sought to investigate the role census tract and Community Resilience Estimates (CRE) have on visual outcomes for amblyopia.
Methods :
Retrospective review of patients who presented at 3-5 years of age with refractive, anisometropic amblyopia with follow-up available through ages 8-10 years was conducted. Patients with prior amblyopia treatment, tropia ≥ 4 PD, or amblyogenic structural disease were excluded. Age, sex, self-reported race and ethnicity, address, insurance type, logMAR visual acuity (VA), refraction, and number of no-shows/cancellations were recorded. CRE and median income for the census tract of each patient were collected.
Results :
38 patients were included. Mean age was 4.8 ± 0.9 years. 45% were female. Seventeen (45%) patients were white race, and 12 (32%) were Hispanic/Latino ethnicity. Ten (26%) had Medicaid insurance. Mean baseline VA of the amblyopic eyes significantly improved from baseline (0.47 ± 0.26) to final visit (0.11 ± 0.13; p<0.001). Baseline VA was worse in non-Hispanic patients (p=0.042), but final VA was not significantly different. There was a higher percentage of no CRE risk factors in white vs. non-white households (46% vs. 36%; p=0.008) and 1-2 CRE risk factors in non-white vs. white households (44% vs. 36%; p<0.001). There were no significant linear relationships between median income, percentage of households with CRE risk factors, and number of no-shows/cancellations with respect to baseline or final VA. There was no logistic relationship between insurance type and percentage of households with CRE risk factors or with median income.
Conclusions :
Our study did not identify census tract CRE risk factors or median income as a socioeconomic predictor of outcomes in anisometropic, refractive amblyopia. More granular data elements may be necessary to elucidate the relationship between traditional socioeconomic factors with census tract data.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.