Observational studyActa ophthalmologica2026
Direct and indirect costs associated with declining distance visual acuity: A nationwide longitudinal cost-of-illness study with 11-year follow-up.
Observational study in Acta ophthalmologica, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeTo examine the direct and indirect costs associated with declining distance visual acuity (VA).
methodsA longitudinal approach was applied to a large, nationally representative sample with extensive data, including VA measured at two time points. The data of 3867 eligible participants aged 30 years or older at baseline were linked with national registers to estimate health care utilization from 1999 to 2013. A prevalence-based bottom-up approach was utilized to calculate the direct and indirect costs at the 2019 level. Data were adjusted for age, sex and incident comorbidities using generalized linear modelling (GLM). To estimate the cost-of-illness (COI), observed expenses among individuals whose VA declined during the follow-up were compared to the counterfactual situation where VA had not declined, based on the regression analyses. Both individual and population-level costs were reported.
resultsThe annual total direct health care costs per person were €976 for those with non-declining VA and €1838 for those with declining VA (adjusted to match persons without decline in VA). The adjusted indirect costs were €14 579 and €22 631 for the working age subgroups, respectively. In counterfactual analysis, the annual COI associated with declining VA was estimated at €1166 from direct and €6411 from indirect cost sources. At the population level, the direct costs were €0.3 billion and the indirect costs, calculated for the working-age population, were €0.4 billion annually.
conclusionIn total, 7.6% of the national direct health care costs were attributed to declining VA, highlighting the savings potential if the prevalence of declining VA could be reduced.
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