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EDITORIALS: Christopher M Wood Surgery for cataract BMJ 2007; 334: 107 [Full text]

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You mean blindness not visual impairment

Keith Masnick   (20 January 2007)

You mean blindness not visual impairment 20 January 2007
Keith Masnick, Researcher Fac of Medicine, UNSW Send response to journal: Re: You mean blindness not visual impairment	Wood(1) states that cataracts are the main cause of visual impairment. They are the main cause of uncorrectable blindness(2) (about 48%) but refractive error is the most prevalent cause of all presenting visual impairment . Taylor et al(3) estimated that uncorrected refractive error to be 4.5 times more prevalent in Australians over 40 and Dandona et al(4) estimate that uncorrected visual acuity accounts for ove 40% of all impairment world wide(approx 210 million out of 259 million total) . Both these estimates exclude uncorrected presbyopia which effects 300-400 million people. A tighter definition of visual impairment was warranted. 1. Wood CM. Surgery for cataract. BMJ 2007;334:107-. 2. Resnikoff S, Pascolini D, Eyta'ale D, Kocur I, Pararajasegaram R, Pokharel G, Mariotti S. Global data on visual impairment in the year 2002. Bulletin of WHO 2004;82:844-51. 3. Taylor FW, Keeffe JE, Vu HTV, Wang JJ, Rochtchina E, Pezzullo L, Mitchell P. Vision loss in Australia. MJA 2005;182:565-8. 4. Dandona L, Dandona R. What is the global burden of visual impairment? BMC Medicine 2006;4:6. Competing interests: None declared