Abstract
Childhood cataract is an avoidable cause of visual disability worldwide and is a priority for VISION 2020: The Right to Sight. There is a paucity of information about the burden of cataract in children and the aim of this review is to assess the global prevalence of childhood cataract. The methodology for the review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. We performed a literature search for studies reporting estimates of prevalence or incidence of cataract among children (aged<18 years) at any global location using the Cochrane Library, Medline and Embase up to January 2015. No restrictions were imposed based on language or year of publication. Study quality was assessed using a critical appraisal tool designed for systematic reviews of prevalence. Twenty prevalence and four incidence studies of childhood cataract from five different geographical regions were included. The overall prevalence of childhood cataract and congenital cataract was in the range from 0.32 to 22.9/10000 children (median=1.03) and 0.63 to 9.74/10000 (median=1.71), respectively. The incidence ranged from 1.8 to 3.6/10000 per year. The prevalence of childhood cataract in low-income economies was found to be 0.42 to 2.05 compared with 0.63 to 13.6/10000 in high-income economies. There was no difference in the prevalence based on laterality or gender. This review highlights substantial gaps in the epidemiological knowledge of childhood cataract worldwide, particularly from low and lower middle-income economies. More studies are needed using standard definitions and case ascertainment methods with large enough sample sizes.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Angela Lai and Bruno Fidalgo for help with translation.
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SS contributed to protocol design, study design, the literature review, quality assessment, the data extraction, statistical analysis, the data interpretation, article preparation and correspondence. CMS contributed to protocol design, study design, the literature review, quality assessment, the data extraction, statistical analysis, the data interpretation and article review. JGL contributed to protocol design, the data analysis, the data interpretation and article review. ARF contributed to study design and article review.
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Sheeladevi, S., Lawrenson, J., Fielder, A. et al. Global prevalence of childhood cataract: a systematic review. Eye 30, 1160–1169 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/eye.2016.156
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/eye.2016.156