For the study, researchers evaluated data on visual impairment taken from six large studies. The team found that 1.02 million people were blind in the U.S. in 2015. Also in 2015, 3.2 million Americans had visual impairment — defined as 20/40 or worse vision with best possible correction — and 8.2 million had vision problems due to uncorrected refractive error such as nearsightedness or farsightedness.
Using census projection models, researchers were able to determine that the amount of those legally blind in the U.S. will increase to 2 million by 2050, those with visual impairment will grow to 6.95 million and those with uncorrected refractive errors will grow to 16.4 million. These numbers are linked to the nation’s aging baby boomer population as the vast majority of the burden of visual impairment and blindness will fall on individuals 80 years of age or older.
Paul A. Sieving, MD, PhD, director of the NEI, said, “These findings are an important forewarning of the magnitude of vision loss to come. 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.”
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