Background: There are limited systematic reviews on the prevalence of uncorrected refractive errors in children. We aimed to summarize the prevalence and causes of pediatric uncorrected refractive error (URE) from studies in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) sub-regions.
Methods: The pooled analysis used the individual participant data (ages less than 20 years old) from population-based studies around the world by regions. URE was defined as presenting VA < 6/18 and improving to ≥ 6/18 or ≥1 line on using a pinhole in either eye, with main causes of myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism. Each study provided data on any URE, myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism by age, gender, and ethnicity. Prevalence rates were directly age and gender standardized to the 2020 world population with all age groups. Estimates were calculated by study and sub-regions after pooling. Summary estimates included studies in which URE was assessed from a pinhole-corrected refraction in the better eye.
Results: The combined pooled data contained 302,513,219 patients including 8 963 URE cases individuals from 57 studies. Prevalence varied by age and GBD sub-regions and differed by gender. The age- and region-standardized prevalence of URE was 3.41 per 1000 (CI, 1.53~7.62) in Western Pacific region (12 studies), 2.26 per 1000 (CI, 0.85~6.01) in South-East Asia region (14 studies), 5.85 per 1000 (CI, 3.75~9.13) in Americans (11 studies) and 4.40 per 1000 (CI, 3.0~6.45) in Eastern Mediterranean region (13 studies). On the basis of these data, myopia was the first-leading cause in female children with 12~17 age group, with the prevalence rate 18.2 per 1000 (CI, 11.52~23.61). Astigmatism was detected in 27.2 per 1000 male children with 6~11 age group (CI: 19.12-30.68).
Conclusions: Prevalence of URE available data within these sub-regions are widely disparate. Myopia and astigmatism in young age children continue as the leading cause of URE worldwide. Providing appropriate refractive correction to those individuals whose vision can be improved is an important public health endeavor with implications for safety and quality of life.