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

Purpose: To investigate causes of childhood blindness in the United States using the IRIS (R) 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. Ophthalmology 2023;130:907-913 <(c)> 2023 by the American Academy of Ophthalmology

Automated summary

This study investigated the causes of childhood blindness in the United States using the IRIS Registry. Among the 81,164 children included in the study, 1% had visual acuity of 20/200 or worse in their better-seeing eye. The main causes of blindness were retinopathy of prematurity (31.3%), nystagmus (8.1%), and cataract (6.7%). Over half of the blind patients had treatable causes of blindness.