About 6% of Americans over 12 years old are visually impaired!

An estimated 14 million Americans -- slightly more than 6 percent of the population -- over age 12 are visually impaired.

But most of these people -- about 11 million -- could have vision that's nearly normal if they wore corrective lenses, such as glasses or contact lenses. About 3 million have vision problems that can't be corrected with contacts or glasses, because they have medical problems, such as cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration or glaucoma.

Those are the latest estimates from a study by researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI). The results appear in the May 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Periodic eye care is important. For the majority of people with visual impairment, spectacles or contacts could alleviate the problem. For a smaller fraction of people, there are medical eye issues that should be identified so they can be treated," said Dr. Paul Sieving, director of the NEI, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Vision problems can seriously affect quality of life, according to the study. People with vision problems are more likely to fall, have a higher risk of fractures and other injuries, and they may be more likely to limit their driving or stop driving altogether.

According to the study, the last time the federal government assessed the prevalence of visual impairment among Americans was in the mid-1970s. Since that time, the U.S. population has gotten older and more diverse. Rates of nearsightedness -- called myopia -- also have been reported to be increasing worldwide. For those reasons, measurements of visual acuity were once again included in the large National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, beginning in 1999.
The new study measured the visual acuity of 13,265 people who visited a mobile examination center between 1999 and 2002.

Those who had distance acuity of 20/50 or worse were defined as visually impaired. That means a person is nearsighted and can't clearly see objects at a distance. When vision reaches 20/50, many states no longer allow a person to continue driving without corrective lenses, according to Sieving.

This study didn't include an assessment of people who have trouble seeing nearby objects and need reading glasses as they age.

Nearly 1,200 people in the study had visual impairment. More than 83 percent of those people could achieve nearly normal vision simply by using glasses or contact lenses, the researchers found.

For the other 17 percent, Sieving said more serious problems, such as glaucoma or cataracts, caused their vision difficulties.

Extrapolating that data to the U.S. population as a whole, the researchers reported that about 14 million people have uncorrected visual impairment and about 11 million of them could see significantly better with corrective lenses.

"I was surprised at the number of people who weren't corrected better than 20/50," Sieving said.
Hispanics, Asians and other minorities were more likely than whites or blacks to have uncorrected visual impairment. The rates of visual impairment were higher for people who were poor, didn't have private health insurance, had diabetes, and had fewer years of education, the study found.

Dr. Robert Cykiert, an ophthalmologist at New York University Medical Center, said, "The sad thing is a huge part of the population has visual problems simply because they're not wearing glasses."
In some cases, he said, people don't realize they have a problem with their vision, but in others ready access to health care is a problem, as is paying for glasses or contacts.

Both Sieving and Cykiert recommend routine eye care. Sieving said people over 60 should have a yearly eye exam and that younger people, including children, should have an exam every few years. Along with correcting visual problems, regular eye exams can also uncover potentially sight-stealing diseases, such as glaucoma, that can be treated or managed when caught early enough, Cykiert said.