The Clinical Survey on the Prevalence of Eye Diseases in Elderly Patients in Sungnam-Shi Area

ABSTRACT

We retrospectively surveyed total 628 outpatients(1,256 eyes) of age of 60 or over who visited our department of ophthalmology with review of diagnosis, visiual acuity and associated systemic diseases during 3 years from 1988 to 1990 at the Inha University Hospital. The most prevalent ocular disease was cataract, which was diagnosed in 30.7% of total patients. The other disorders comprised conjunctival diseases(21.5%), retinal disease(18.8%), refractive errors(6.5%), lid and lacrimal diseases(5.7%), corneal diseases(5.1%), vitreous diseases(4.6%), glaucoma(4.0%), optic nerve diseases(0.79%) and uveal diseases(0.79%). The blindess was definded as 0.1 or worse of corrected visual acuity and 28% of examined eyes were conuted as the blindness. Proportion of blindness by causes were as follwed: cataract(56%), corneal diseases(10%), diabetic retinopathy(8%), glaucoma(6%), hypertensive retinopathy(5%) and vitreous diseases(3%). Various systemic diseases were associated with ocular disorders in 24% of total cases. Among them, the most prevalent systemic disease was hypertension, 36%, and diabetes mellitus 30% in next, with the following of respiratory diseases 13%, heart diseases 6%, neurologic diseases 5%, hepatobiliary diseases 5%.