Nursing home patients need basic eye care, study finds

Nursing home patients need basic eye care, study finds
A cataract patient is examined inside a hospital in Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia, China September 21, 2007. Nursing home patients often are overlooked when it comes to taking basic steps to improve their vision, leading to a decline in their quality of life and problems such as depression, U.S. researchers said on Monday. (Bobby Yip/Reuters)CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nursing home patients often areoverlooked when it comes to taking basic steps to improve theirvision, leading to a decline in their quality of life andproblems such as depression, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Optical services tend to be unavailable to residents ofnursing homes for several reasons, according to the research byCynthia Owsley and colleagues at the University of Alabama,Birmingham.
One factor is a pervasive attitude among care givers,family members and others that new or upgraded eyeglasses won'tdo any good for those who are already mentally or physicallyimpaired, they said.
The study looked at nearly 200 residents of 17 nursinghomes in the Birmingham area. Some were given glasses a weekafter a vision checkup and others got them two months aftertheir exams.
The group that received glasses first reported higherscores for general vision, reading, activities and hobbies andsocial interaction as well as fewer depressive symptoms in twomonths compared to the group still waiting for glasses.
"This study implies that there are significant, short-termquality-of-life and psychological benefits to providing themost basic of eye care services -- namely, spectacle correction-- to older adults residing in nursing homes," concluded thestudy published in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
The findings are significant, the researchers said, becausenursing home residents in the United States and otherindustrialized nations are up to 15 times more likely to havevision problems than people of the same age who liveindependently.
This is in part because those with poor vision are morelikely to be admitted to nursing homes, and those in need oftenlack transportation or escorts to eye clinics, the report said.
At the same time, doctors who offer eye care services atnursing homes are in short supply, and only 12 percent of U.S.nursing homes have optometric services on-site, the reportsaid.
(Reporting by Michael Conlon; Editing by Andrew Stern andXavier Briand)