6,439
Views
8
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Review Article

A Review of Capture-recapture Methods and Its Possibilities in Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences

, , , , , , & ORCID Icon show all
Pages 310-324 | Received 11 Mar 2019, Accepted 26 Mar 2020, Published online: 03 May 2020
 

ABSTRACT

Epidemiological information is expected to be used to develop key aspects of eye care such as to control and minimise the impact of diseases, to allocate resources, to monitor public health actions, to determine the best treatment options and to forecast the consequence of diseases in populations. Epidemiological studies are expected to provide information about the prevalence and/or incidence of eye diseases or conditions. To determine prevalence is necessary to perform a cross-sectional screening of the population at risk to ascertain the number of cases.

The aim of this review is to describe and evaluate capture-recapture methods (or models) to ascertaining the number of individuals with a disease (e.g. diabetic retinopathy) or condition (e.g. vision impairment) in the population.

The review covers the fundamental aspects of capture-recapture methods that would enable non-experts in epidemiology to use it in ophthalmic studies. The review provides information about theoretical aspects of the method with examples of studies in ophthalmology in which it has been used. We also provide a problem/solution approach for limitations arising from the lists obtained from registers or other reliable sources.

We concluded that capture-recapture models can be considered reliable to estimate the total number of cases with eye conditions using incomplete information from registers. Accordingly, the method may be used to maintain updated epidemiological information about eye conditions helping to tackle the lack of surveillance information in many regions of the globe.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by FCT (COMPETE/QREN) grant reference [PTDC/DPT-EPI/0412/2012] in the context of the Prevalence and Costs of Visual Impairment in Portugal: a hospital-based study (PCVIP-study) and FCT Strategic Funding UID/FIS/04650/2013. PLR is funded by FCT (COMPETE/QREN) grant reference [SFRH/BD/119420/2016].