Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2021
Abstract
Purpose: To study the prevalence of systemic conditions in older adults, either self-reported or discovered during routine eye examinations, at multitier eye-care facilities over the past decade, and to explore their association with vision and common ocular disorders, including cataract, glaucoma, and retinopathy.
Methods: Retrospective review of a large data set compiled from the electronic medical records of patients older than 60 years who presented to an eye facility of a multitier ophthalmology network located in 200 different geographical locations that included urban and rural eye-care centers spread across four states in India over a 10-year period.
Results: 618,096 subjects aged 60 or older were identified as visiting an eye facility over the 10-year study period. The mean age of the study individuals was 67·28 (±6·14) years. A majority of older adults (66·96%) reported being free of systemic illnesses. Patients from lower socioeconomic status had a lower prevalence of chronic systemic disease, but the presenting vision was poorer. Hypertension (21·62%) and diabetes (18·77%) were the most commonly reported chronic conditions in patients who had concomitant systemic illness with visual concerns.
Conclusion: The prevalence of chronic systemic illnesses in older adults presenting to multitier eye-care facilities is relatively low, except in those with diabetic retinopathy. These observations suggest a need to include active screening for common chronic diseases in standalone eye-care facilities to achieve a more accurate assessment of chronic disease burden in the older population.
Recommended Citation
Behera, Umesh Chandra; Salzman, Brooke; Das, Anthony Vipin; Prashanthi, Gumpili Sai; Lalakia, Parth; Derman, Richard; and Panigrahy, Bharat, "Prevalence of chronic disease in older adults in multitier eye-care facilities in South India: Electronic medical records-driven big data analytics report" (2021). Department of Family & Community Medicine Faculty Papers. Paper 60.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/fmfp/60
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
PubMed ID
34827006
Language
English
Comments
This article is the author’s final published version in Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, Volume 69, Issue 12, December 2021, Pages 3618 - 3622.
The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.4103/ijo.IJO_621_21. Copyright © Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.