Survey on the Causes of Blindness Among the Hospital Patient in 3 Districts.

Shin, Hanho; Kim, Jihan; Lim, Hunhyung

Original Article

Journal of the Korean Ophthalmological Society 1986;27(3):397-404.
Published online March 1, 1986.

Survey on the Causes of Blindness Among the Hospital Patient in 3 Districts.

Hanho Shin, Jihan Kim, Hunhyung Lim

Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medicine, Soon Chun Hyang College, Korea.

지역별 3개 종합병원에서 본 실명 원인조사

김지한(Ji Han Kim),신환호(Hwan Ho Shin),임헌형(Hun Hyung Lim)

Abstract

We surveyed the causes of blindness among the 6692 eye patients of 3 hospitals(Seoul, Chunan, Kumi) in 1984. Blindness is defined as visual acuity of 0.1(20/200) or less in better eye with best correction. The representation of the diagnosis of the ocular diseases is based on the examination of the ophthalmologists. The estimated number of blindness is 259(6.74%)in Seoul, 106(8.92%) in Chunan, 70(4.21%) in Kumi with total of 435(6.5%) among the 6692 eye patients. The leading causes of blindness for individual districts are cataract(28.19%), retinal and vitreous diseases(20.46%), trauma (15.06%), diseases of optic nerve(10.81%), corneal diseases(8.10%) in Seoul; cataract(35.81%), corneal diseases(18.87%), global diseases(13.21%), trauma(10.38%), retinal and vitreous diseases(6.60%) in Chunan; and cataract(34.29%), corneal diseases(14.21%), trauma (12.86%), global diseases(8.57%), retinal and vitreous diseases(8.50%) in Kumi. Rates of the blind eyes for the age groups are; 1.2%(under the age of 5), 4.1%(6~9), 10.3%(10~19), 30.8%(20~39), 23.5%(40~59), and 30.1%(above 60). Important causes of blindness in each age group are trauma(43.48%), optic nerve diseases(13.04%), and global diseases(13.04%) for below the age of 10, trauma(28.89%), retinal diseases(17.78%), and optic nerve diseases(13.33%) in 10~19 age group, corneal diseases(19.40%). cataract(18.66%), and retinal diseases(16.42%) in 20~39 age group, cataract(28.43%), retinal diseases(18.63%), and corneal diseases(10.78%) in 40~59 age group and cataract(59.54%), retinal diseases(9.92%), and glaucoma(8.40%) for above 60. There are no significant differences between male and female, right eyes and left eyes in the causes of the blind eyes, and also we make some comparisons with different statistics of domestic and foreign countries.