Original articleTen-Year Incidence of Age-Related Cataract and Cataract Surgery in an Older Australian Population: The Blue Mountains Eye Study
Section snippets
Study Population
Details of the BMES population and methods are reported elsewhere.2 In brief, the BMES is a population-based cohort study of vision and common eye diseases in an urban older population comprising 2 postcode areas in the Blue Mountains region, west of Sydney, Australia. This geographically well-defined area has a stable population that is reasonably representative of Australia in socioeconomic status and other measures. All residents of these 2 postcode areas who were 49 years or older were
Results
A comparison of participants and nonparticipants at each follow-up examination is summarized in Table 1 (available at http://aaojournal.org). Nonparticipants were significantly younger (P<0.0001), more likely to be smokers (P<0.0001) and to have diabetes (P = 0.049). They were also more likely to report lower health related quality of life (P = 0.041) and were less likely to live in their own home (P = 0.0006) than those who participated in follow-up examinations. Of the 2564 participants who
Discussion
Several classification and grading methods have been developed to measure the presence and extent of cataract including the Oxford,27 Wilmer,28 Lens Opacities Classification System,29, 30, 31 and Wisconsin.23 The Wisconsin Cataract Grading System was first developed in 1990 for use in the BDES. It was shown to have good reproducibility when applied to the BMES population.24
Studies that have examined cataract incidence are summarized in Table 6. These studies differ from each other in terms of
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Cited by (0)
Manuscript no. 2006-1347.
Supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, Canberra, Australia (grant nos. 974159, 211069).