Friday, May 20, 2016

Visual Impairment Skyrockets as Boomers Age

"With the youngest of the baby boomers hitting 65 by 2029, the number of people with visual impairment or blindness in the United States is expected to double to more than 8 million by 2050, according to projections based on the most recent census data and from studies funded by the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. Another 16.4 million Americans are expected to have difficulty seeing due to correctable refractive errors such as myopia (nearsightedness) or hyperopia (farsightedness) that can be fixed with glasses, contacts or surgery." That's the start of a press release from NEI. Approximately, "1 million Americans were legally blind (20/200 vision or worse) in 2015. Having 20/200 vision means that for clear vision, you would have to be 20 feet or closer to an object that a person with normal vision could see from 200 feet away. Meanwhile, 3.2 million Americans had visual impairment in 2015—meaning they had 20/40 or worse vision with best possible correction. Another 8.2 million had vision problems due to uncorrected refractive error."

 The researchers were led by Rohit Varma, M.D., director of the University of Southern California’s Roski Eye Institute, Los Angeles, led the researchers, and JAMA Ophthalmology published the results just this week (May 19th).
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