The number of people with visual impairment or blindness in the U.S. is projected to double by 2050, reaching more than 8 million, according to data and studies by the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. An additional 16.4 Americans will have difficulty seeing due to problems such as myopia (nearsightedness) or hyperopia (farsightedness) that can be fixed with glasses, contacts or surgery.
The study, published in
JAMA Ophthalmology, estimates that 1 million Americans were legally blind in 2015, meaning they have 20/200 vision or worse. Currently, 3.2 million Americans have visual impairments, which means they have 20/40 or worse vision after the best possible correction, and another 8.2 million have less-than-ideal vision that remains uncorrected.
"These findings are an important forewarning of the magnitude of vision loss to come," said National Eye Institute Director Dr. Paul A. Sieving. "They suggest that there is a huge opportunity for screening efforts to identify people with correctable vision problems and early signs of eye diseases. Early detection and intervention — possibly as simple as prescribing corrective lenses — could go a long way toward preventing a significant proportion of avoidable vision loss."
The new study was led by Rohit Varma, M.D., director of the University of Southern California's Roski Eye Institute, Los Angeles. Varma and his colleagues project that over the next 35 years, the number of people with legal blindness will increase by 21 percent each decade to 2 million by 2050.
In addition, best-corrected visual impairment will grow by 25 percent each decade, doubling to 6.95 million.
Since advanced age is a key risk factor for sight-robbing conditions such as age-related macular degeneration and cataract, those 80 years and older will be affected the most.
Non-Hispanic whites, particularly white women, represent the largest proportion of people affected by visual impairment and blindness, and their numbers will nearly double. "Based on these data, there is a need for increased screening and interventions across all population, and especially among non-Hispanic white women," Varma said.