RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Monocular and binocular visual impairment in the UK Biobank study: prevalence, associations and diagnoses
JF BMJ Open Ophthalmology
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
SP e000076
DO 10.1136/bmjophth-2017-000076
VO 3
IS 1
A1 Martin McKibbin
A1 Tracey M Farragher
A1 Darren Shickle
A1 ,
YR 2018
UL http://bmjophth.bmj.com/content/3/1/e000076.abstract
AB Objective To determine the prevalence of, associations with and diagnoses leading to mild visual impairment or worse (logMAR >0.3) in middle-aged adults in the UK Biobank study.Methods and analysis Prevalence estimates for monocular and binocular visual impairment were determined for the UK Biobank participants with fundus photographs and spectral domain optical coherence tomography images. Associations with socioeconomic, biometric, lifestyle and medical variables were investigated for cases with visual impairment and matched controls, using multinomial logistic regression models. Self-reported eye history and image grading results were used to identify the primary diagnoses leading to visual impairment for a sample of 25% of cases.Results For the 65 033 UK Biobank participants, aged 40–69 years and with fundus images, 6682 (10.3%) and 1677 (2.6%) had mild visual impairment or worse in one or both eyes, respectively. Increasing deprivation, age and ethnicity were independently associated with both monocular and binocular visual impairment. No primary diagnosis for the recorded level of visual impairment could be identified for 49.8% of eyes. The most common identifiable diagnoses leading to visual impairment were cataract, amblyopia, uncorrected refractive error and vitreoretinal interface abnormalities.Conclusions The prevalence of visual impairment in the UK Biobank study cohort is lower than for population-based studies from other industrialised countries. Monocular and binocular visual impairment are associated with increasing deprivation, age and ethnicity. The UK Biobank dataset does not allow confident identification of the causes of visual impairment, and the results may not be applicable to the wider UK population.