Eye Glasses for Nursing Home Residents May Improve Life, Decrease Depression

Nov. 12, 2007 - Nursing home residents who received eyeglasses for uncorrected refractive error were found to have improved quality of life and decreased symptoms of depression when compared to those with refractive error who had not received eyeglasses, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Refractive error occurs when the proper degree of light does not reach the back of the eye, resulting in blurred vision.

Providing Glasses Just Begins the Challenge

By Tucker Sutherland, editor

For those of us who have cared for loved ones in nursing homes, in particular Alzheimer's patients, there are few memories that can make you grin. But, I had to grin as I read this report.

My mother, who has since died, was dependent on her glasses although she never kept them on for long.

My grin comes as I recall the hours we spent looking for those glasses. Either she had left them somewhere, someone else had carried them off, or she had hidden them so no one would steal them, but could not remember doing it.

She would laugh about, too, in those early years, before the Alzheimer's ate away her mind.

But the missing glasses was just not a problem we wrestled with. I soon learn it was a regular problem throughout the nursing home and the nurses ended up with piles of glasses that no one could identify.

Anyway, in my experience, this study is certainly true - older people are much happier with glasses. But, I suspect they will soon be missing.

“Nursing home residents in the United States and other industrialized countries have high rates of vision impairment, with estimates ranging from three to 15 times higher than corresponding rates for community-dwelling older adults,” according to background information in the article.

“Studies suggest that vision impairment in about one-third of nursing home residents could largely be reversed by treatment of uncorrected refractive error (myopia [nearsightedness], hyperopia [farsightedness], presbyopia [loss of focus]).”

Cynthia Owsley, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., and colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham conducted a trial in which 142 nursing home residents age 55 or older were assigned to a group that would receive eyeglasses one week after check-up (78 residents) or a group that would receive eyeglasses at follow-up two months after check-up (64 residents).