Purpose: To determine the prevalence of full-thickness macular holes in the elderly Chinese population.
Design: Population-based, cross-sectional cohort study.
Methods: The Beijing Eye Study included 4439 subjects out of 5324 subjects invited to participate (response rate 83.4%) aged 40 years or older. The present investigation consisted of 8653 (97.9%) eyes of 4346 subjects for whom readable fundus photographs were available.
Results: Full-thickness macular holes were found in eight (0.092%) eyes of seven (0.16%) patients (six women). Prevalence was 0.09 +/- 3.04% [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.03, 0.16%].
Conclusions: Full-thickness macular holes may be present in approximately 1.6 out of 1000 elderly Chinese in Northern China. Calculated for the entire population in China, the figure would be approximately 750,000 patients with unilateral full-thickness macular holes [n = 650,000 (95% CI: 217,000 to 1,156,000)] or bilateral full-thickness macular holes [n = 100,000 (95% CI: 33,000 to 178,000)].