How Much Eye Care Services Do Asian Populations Need? Projection from the Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Disease (SEED) Study

Abstract

1,3-5PURPOSE. We quantified and measured the needs for specific eye care services, including refractive services (RS), annual eye examination services (AES), cataract surgery services (CSS), and low vision services (LVS) in urban adult populations in Asia. METHODS.We conducted three population-based studies of Singapore-resident Chinese, Malays, and Indians aged ‡40 years to measure the proportion of people who needed specific eye care services. RESULTS.Our data included 3353 Chinese, 3280 Malays, and 3400 Indians (participation rate 73.6%). Overall, approximately 70% of the populations needed eye care services and more than 30% had more than one need. The age-standardized proportion of people who need RS, AES, CSS, and LVS were 65.3%, 22.4%, 12.5%, and 0.5%, respectively, in Chinese. These figures were 49.6%, 33.6%, 11.0%, and 0.7%, respectively, in Malays, and 55.6%, 40.0%, 13.4%, and 0.8%, respectively, in Indians. With demographic change, our projection showed that the number of adults needing eye care services in urban Asia will grow from 437 million in 2010 to 827 million in 2030. Diabetes was a major cause of AES and a significant predictor for CSS, whereas higher blood pressure was a predictor for AES.CONCLUSIONS. The needs for eye care services in an urban setting in Asia is high, particularly the needs for RS, AES, and CSS. The high prevalences of diabetes and hypertension are the driving factors underlying these needs. The burden of providing such eye care services highlights the need for new strategies for improvements in primary care and capacity building for eye care professionals other than ophthalmologists. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci.

Six-Year Incidence of and Risk Factors for Cataract Surgery in a Multi-ethnic Asian Population

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Prevalence and risk factors for epiretinal membrane: the Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Disease study

“…Baseline characteristics of the SEED participants have been described previously 9. After excluding 234 participants without gradable retinal photographs, a total of 9799 SEED participants were included for analysis.…”

Validation of Risk Equations for Complications of Type 2 Diabetes (RECODe) Using Individual Participant Data From Diverse Longitudinal Cohorts in the U.S.

“…The RECODe equation for diabetic retinopathy was evaluated against the diagnosis of new moderate to severe diabetic retinopathy in either eye, adjudicated by ophthalmologists from bilateral retinal photographs using the Airlie House classification system modified for the Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) (23). The photographs were obtained through ancillary studies on a subset of participants in both MESA (a subset of n = 949 subjects with retinal photographs with exam 2 and n = 905 with exam 5) and JHS (a subset of n = 886 subjects with diabetes or impaired fasting glucose photographed with exam 3) (24,25). Further details about the outcome examinations, definitions, and timing are provided in Table 2.…”