Nationwide incidence of blindness in South Korea: a 12-year study from 2002 to 2013.

Abstract

Blindness is an important public health issue. The background of the study is to determine the incidence of blindness in South Korea. Nationwide population-based retrospective study. All individuals from South Korea (n=47516098). Patients confirmed with legal blindness based on the worse-seeing and better-seeing eyes between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2013 were included. The Korean National Health Insurance Service (KNHIS) database was used. Using the World Health Organization definition, blindness was defined as best-corrected visual acuity in the worse-seeing and better-seeing eyes of <20/400. The mean incidence of blindness during the 12-year period was estimated. The population of South Korea was estimated using census data in 2005 and 2010. The total number of legal blindness cases in the KNHIS database. We identified 195004 and 20492 cases of newly developed legal blindness based on the worse-seeing and better-seeing eyes, respectively, and the mean incidences of blindness were 34.2 and 3.6 cases/100000 person-years, respectively. The prevalence of blindness based on the worse-seeing and better-seeing eyes was 425.3 and 57.7 cases/100000 persons, respectively. The incidence of blindness based on the worse-seeing eye was higher in men than in women overall. Additionally, the incidence increased with age and showed a decreasing trend from 2002 to 2013. The prevalence of blindness showed an increasing trend from 2002 to 2013. The findings of our study will help in the assessment of the blindness-related socio-economic burden and in healthcare planning.