Americans don't care May is Healthy Vision Month according to the National Institutes of Health and the National Eye Institute. Why? They take their eyesight for granted, according to NEI's studies. For example, in surveys conducted the same year by the NEI's National Eye Health Education Program and the Lions Club International Foundation, American adults noted that the loss of eyesight would have an extreme impact on their daily lives — though more than 25 percent said their last eye examination was more than two years prior, and 9 percent had never had an eye exam, according to a NEI press release.
The release also notes that approximately 14 million Americans are currently visually impaired because of eye diseases and disorders. This number is growing as boomers age. Of adults older than 40, more than 4 million have diabetic eye complications, more than 2 million have glaucoma, and more than 1.75 million have age-related macular degeneration. The prevalence of nearsightedness alone has increased 66 percent in the past 30 years, according to a 2009 NEI study.
Recent NEI investigations indicate many eye diseases affect particular ethnic groups more often than others. African-Americans, for example, have about a 12 percent risk of glaucoma, more than twice the risk of non-Hispanic white Americans. Both Asian-Americans and Hispanics have a risk of about 6.5 percent. In another NEI study, researchers found that Latinos have higher incidence rates of visual impairment, blindness, diabetic eye disease, and cataracts than non-Hispanic whites. The same scientists previously showed that more than 60 percent of eye disease in Latinos remains undiagnosed.
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