Incurable Blindness: The Final Frontier in Vision Restoration

ABSTRACT

Blindness with no light perception is clinically irreversible. This cross-sectional hospital-based study analyzed patients presenting with no light perception in at least one eye. Between 2010 and 2022, 60,668 (1.85%) such patients were identified, of which 3,476 (5.73%) had bilateral and 57,192 (94.27%) had unilateral blindness. The major causes were glaucoma (21.8%), trauma (17.7%), phthisis bulbi (13.1%), retinal diseases (10.6%), anophthalmos (7.8%), and optic atrophy (4.9%). The majority of the affected individuals were adults (89.9%) and male (64%), and affected individuals were more likely to be from the lower socio-economic strata (3.14%) and from a rural location (1.99%). Despite recent therapeutic advances in ophthalmology, many patients with blindness cannot be restored to sight. Although preventive measures can mitigate sight loss to some extent, regenerative therapies, retinal and ciliary body transplantation, and whole eyeball transplantation need to be developed as sight restorative procedures to help those who currently have no hope of regaining vision.

KEYWORDS:

• Big data
• electronic medical records
• incurable blindness
• India

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of our Department of eyeSmart EMR & AEye team, especially Mr Ranganath Vadapalli and Mr Mohammad Pasha.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The corresponding author states that authorship credit of this manuscript was based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Each author has participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. All persons designated as authors qualify for authorship, and all those who are eligible are listed. All listed authors met conditions 1, 2, and 3.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation, Hyderabad, India