Prevalence of Dry Eye Disease in an Elderly Korean Population

Abstract

To evaluate the prevalence of and risk factors for dry eye disease (DED) in an elderly Korean population.Methods: This population-based study in Yongin, Korea, included 657 individuals 65 years or older randomly selected from an official household registration database. Dry eye symptoms were assessed using a 6-item questionnaire, and DED was defined as having 1 or more dry eye symptoms often or all the time. Dry eye tests, including the Schirmer test, tear film break-up time measured using fluorescein, cornea fluorescein staining, and examination for meibomian gland dysfunction, were performed. Results:The crude prevalence of DED was 30.3%, and the age-, sex-, and region (urban vs rural)-adjusted preva-lence was 33.2%. Women (P=.01) and urban dwellers (P =.001) were more likely to have DED. Of those with DED, 85.1% had tear film break-up time of 10 seconds or less, 54.1% had meibomian gland dysfunction, 39.2% had a fluorescein score of 1 or greater, and 32.8% had a Schirmer test score of 5 mm or less. A low Schirmer score was correlated with increased prevalence of DED, although sensitivity was low.Conclusions: Dry eye disease is common in elderly Koreans; female sex and living in an urban region were strongly correlated with its frequency. We also noted a positive correlation between low Schirmer test scores and symptom-based DED.

Impact of dry eye on reading in a population-based sample of the elderly: the Salisbury Eye Evaluation

“…Some researchers choose to define dry eye cases based on the presence of symptoms,21 22 a strategy that has been used in previous SEE publications 12. This approach is logical because dry eye signs and symptoms correlate poorly (figure 1),11 23 and because dry eye is a dynamic condition in which the absence of signs on a single exam may not mean the absence of pathology or imply a lack of functional impairment.…”

Meibomian gland dysfunction with involutional eyelids malposition

“…Сухожилия связок век и хрящевая пластин-ка ответственны за горизонтальную стабильность век. Ретракторы нижнего века, являясь анало-гами апоневроза леватора и мышцы Мюллера верхнего века, обеспечивают вертикальную ста-бильность [4,9,16,23,33]. Впервые термин «дисфункция мейбомиевых желёз» был предложен Gutgesell et al в 1982 году для описания клинических проявлений наруше-ния функций мейбомиевых желёз, приводящих к развитию блефарита [14,17,18].…”

Prevalence of Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Meibomian Gland Dysfunction in the General Population of Spain

“…1 Consequently, the report of the epidemiology subcommittee of this workshop recommended not only measures derived from clinical evaluation and by purely objective means, but also a symptomatic assessment for the detection of MGD. 2 However, although symptoms, alone or in combination, are used for assessing ocular surface disorders such as dry eye (DE) in many studies, [3][4][5][6][7][8] their relevance for MGD estimation is not known as the proportion of asymptomatic population-based patients has not yet been investigated.…”