HKUMed: Most mild visual impairment cases are treatable
發佈日期: 2025-09-29 21:16
TVB News
The medical faculty of the University of Hong Kong has projected that 27.2 percent of Southern District residents suffer from mild visual impairment, including cataract.
But most cases can be treated.
This came after HKUMed and the government completed an eye screening programme that involved over 21,000 residents aged 50 or above.
Mr. Lam is a Southern District resident who took part in the programme and discovered that he had glaucoma.
Launched in May 2019 and completed in May this year, the project provided free eye examination, including intraocular pressure measurement and fundus photography, to 21,637 residents aged 50 or above.
The results show that 27.2 percent of the participants were found to have mild visual impairment.
But through appropriate spectacle correction, the percentage can be reduced to 11.1 percent.
HKUMed found that refractive errors and cataract were the main causes of visual disability.
CHRISTOPHER LEUNG,Chairperson, Dept. of Ophthalmology, HKUMed said:"We are talking about the average wait time for specialist out-patient clinics is about one to two years. With that, we perhaps are seeing a little bit more mild visual impairment cases than some other countries, like Singapore."
Meanwhile, the screening programme referred 5,843 residents to public hospitals or private doctors for undiagnosed eye diseases.
Among them, 2,564 individuals had vision-disabling cataracts and 2,338 with glaucoma or high-risk glaucoma indicators.
KENDRICK CO SHIH,Clinical Associate Professor of Practice, Dept. of Ophthalmology, HKUMed said:"What are we seeing in this study and what we are seeing in other similar cities is that we are getting more and more eye diseases, especially related to ageing and myopia. This is something we should be alerting our population, that we should be checking for eye diseases before its too late."
