Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

Learn about the flu shot, COVID-19 vaccine, and our masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

Causes of Childhood Blindness in the United States using the IRIS Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight). Ophthalmology Lim, H. W., Pershing, S., Moshfeghi, D. M., Heo, H., Haque, M. E., Lambert, S. R., IRIS Registry Analytic Center Consortium, Pershing, S., Hyman, L., Haller, J. A., Lee, A. Y., Lee, C. S., Lum, F., Miller, J. W., Lorch, A. 2023

Abstract

PURPOSE: To investigate causes of childhood blindness in the United States using the IRIS Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight).DESIGN: Cross-Sectional Study.PARTICIPANTS: Patients =18 years of age with visual acuity 20/200 or worse in their better seeing eye in the IRIS Registry during 2018.METHODS: Causes of blindness were classified by anatomical site and specific diagnoses.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Percentages of causes of blindness.RESULTS: Of 81,164 children with 2018 visual acuity data in the IRIS Registry, 961 (1.18%) had visual acuity 20/200 or worse in their better-seeing eye. Leading causes of blindness were retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in 301 (31.3%), nystagmus in 78 (8.1%), and cataract in 64 (6.7%) patients. The retina was the leading anatomic site (47.7%) followed by optic nerve (11.6%) and lens (10.0%). A total of 52.4% of patients had treatable causes of blindness.CONCLUSIONS: This analysis offers a unique cross-sectional view of childhood blindness in the US using a clinical data registry. More than one-half of blind patients had a treatable cause of blindness.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.ophtha.2023.04.004

View details for PubMedID 37037315