BCLA CLEAR Presbyopia: Epidemiology and impact

Maria Markoulli; Timothy R Fricke; Anitha Arvind; Kevin D Frick; Kerryn M Hart; Mahesh R Joshi; Himal Kandel; Antonio Filipe Macedo; Dimitra Makrynioti; Neil Retallic; Nery Garcia-Porta; Gauri Shrestha; James S Wolffsohn

doi:10.1016/j.clae.2024.102157

BCLA CLEAR Presbyopia: Epidemiology and impact

Cont Lens Anterior Eye. 2024 Apr 8:102157. doi: 10.1016/j.clae.2024.102157. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ School of Optometry and Vision Science, UNSW Sydney, Australia. Electronic address: m.markoulli@unsw.edu.au.
² School of Optometry and Vision Science, UNSW Sydney, Australia; Department of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Melbourne, Australia; National Vision Research Institute, Australian College of Optometry, Melbourne, Australia.
³ Department of Optometry, School of Medical and Allied Sciences, GD Goenka University, India.
⁴ Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, USA; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Departments of International Health and Health Policy and Management, USA; Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology, USA.
⁵ School of Medicine, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Australia; Member Support and Optometry Advancement, Optometry Australia, Australia.
⁶ School of Health Professions, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom.
⁷ Save Sight Institute, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Australia; Sydney Eye Hospital, Australia.
⁸ Department of Medicine and Optometry, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Linnaeus University, Sweden; Centre of Physics of Minho and Porto Universities, School of Sciences, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
⁹ School of Health Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Patras, Greece.
¹⁰ Specsavers Optical Group, La Villiaze, St. Andrew's, Guernsey, United Kingdom.
¹¹ Applied Physics Department, Optics and Optometry Faculty, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Institute of Materials (iMATUS) of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
¹² Optometry Department, BPK Centre for Ophthalmic Studies, Institute of Medicine, Nepal.
¹³ School of Optometry, Health and Life Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom.

PMID: 38594155
DOI: 10.1016/j.clae.2024.102157

Abstract

The global all-ages prevalence of epidemiologically-measured 'functional' presbyopia was estimated at 24.9% in 2015, affecting 1.8 billion people. This prevalence was projected to stabilise at 24.1% in 2030 due to increasing myopia, but to affect more people (2.1 billion) due to population dynamics. Factors affecting the prevalence of presbyopia include age, geographic location, urban versus rural location, sex, and, to a lesser extent, socioeconomic status, literacy and education, health literacy and inequality. Risk factors for early onset of presbyopia included environmental factors, nutrition, near demands, refractive error, accommodative dysfunction, medications, certain health conditions and sleep. Presbyopia was found to impact on quality-of-life, in particular quality of vision, labour force participation, work productivity and financial burden, mental health, social wellbeing and physical health. Current understanding makes it clear that presbyopia is a very common age-related condition that has significant impacts on both patient-reported outcome measures and economics. However, there are complexities in defining presbyopia for epidemiological and impact studies. Standardisation of definitions will assist future synthesis, pattern analysis and sense-making between studies.

Keywords: Age; Impact of presbyopia; Patient-reported outcome measures; Presbyopia prevalence; Quality of life; Questionnaire; Risk factors; Urban.