Causes of Childhood Blindness in the United States Using the IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight)

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate causes of childhood blindness in the United States using the IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight).

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Participants: Patients ≤ 18 years of age with visual acuity (VA) 20/200 or worse in their better-seeing eye in the IRIS Registry during 2018.

Methods: Causes of blindness were classified by anatomic site and specific diagnoses.

Main outcome measures: Percentages of causes of blindness.

Results: Of 81 164 children with 2018 VA data in the IRIS Registry, 961 (1.18%) had VA 20/200 or worse in their better-seeing eye. Leading causes of blindness were retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in 301 patients (31.3%), nystagmus in 78 patients (8.1%), and cataract in 64 patients (6.7%). The retina was the leading anatomic site (47.7%) followed by optic nerve (11.6%) and lens (10.0%). A total of 52.4% of patients had treatable causes of blindness.

Conclusions: This analysis offers a unique cross-sectional view of childhood blindness in the United States using a clinical data registry. More than one-half of blind patients had a treatable cause of blindness.

Financial disclosure(s): Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found in the Footnotes and Disclosures at the end of this article.

Keywords: Childhood blindness; IRIS registry; Retinopathy of prematurity.