Original articlePrevalence and Causes of Low Vision and Blindness in a Rural Chinese Adult Population: The Handan Eye Study
Section snippets
Study Design and Procedure
The study adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki, ethics approval was obtained from the Beijing Tongren Hospital Ethical Committee, and written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Residents of Yongnian County, Handan, Hebei Province, aged 30 years and older were selected randomly using a stratified, clustered, sampling technique with probabilities proportionate to the size of the population in each cluster. In Yongnian County, 90% of the population are farmers, and 98% are Han.
Results
Of the 7557 eligible subjects, 6830 took part in the study (90.4% response rate). One hundred forty-two (1.9%) declined to participate, 137 (1.8%) ide of Yongnian County. Of the 6830 participants, 5909 (86.5%) were examined in the hospital clinic, 807 (11.8%) in a temporary study site at the village, and 114 (1.7%) at home. Compared with nonparticipants, those who participated were more likely to be female, to be older, to have obtained more years of education, and to be married (Table 1).
Discussion
We found that the population-weighted prevalence of bilateral visual impairment based on presenting VA was 2.7% in rural Chinese adults 30 years of age and older. If defined using BCVA, the population-weighted prevalence of bilateral blindness was 0.5% and that of bilateral low vision was 1.0%. In persons 40 years of age and older, the age-standardized prevalence of bilateral BCVA-defined blindness was 0.7% and that of low vision was 1.5%. These prevalence rates of blindness and low vision are
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Manuscript no. 2008-266.
A list of study group members and study collaborators is available at http://aaojournal.org.
Financial Disclosure(s): The authors have no conflicts of interest with regard to this article.
Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program; no. 2007CB512201) from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Beijing, People's Republic of China; the Program of Health Policy for Blindness Prevention, People's Republic of China; the Key Technologies R&D Program (no. 2006-10903), Bureau of Science and Technology of Handan City, People's Republic of China; Beijing Tongren Hospital, Beijing, People's Republic of China; and the Bureau of Health, Handan City, Hebei Province, People's Republic of China.