Visual impairment and the need for vision care services amongst older Finnish people receiving home care.
Tiina Pesonen, Kaisa-Mari Saarela, Aura Falck and 3 others
PMID 36564916WHAT IT FOUND
In Finnish home-care clients, optometrist screening found vision abnormalities in 57 of 70, while routine RAI HC assessment identified a need for eye care in 25.
RAI alone missed some vision needs.
Key findings
01Optometrist screening found vision test abnormalities in 57 of 70 home-care clients.
02Routine RAI HC assessment identified a need for vision care services in 25 of 70 participants.
03The optometrist's screening identified previously unknown and unmet vision care needs in 30% of participants, compared with 11% by RAI HC.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only 70 participants were recruited from 7 home-care units by quota sampling, not randomly, so the sample may not represent all home-care clients. Home-care nurses selected participants, and they may have chosen people with known vision problems, which could inflate the prevalence of visual impairment. RAI HC data may be incomplete and its reliability is unclear; nurses' assessment skills may have varied. A single optometrist performed all screening, and home lighting, alertness and pandemic-related delays in eye care may have affected results. The study used a normal visual acuity cut-off of 0.63, different from other classifications, so prevalence depends on that threshold. It describes prevalence and screening, not whether vision care improves function or prevents falls; no association with falls was found.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by Kerttu Saalasti Säätiö.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that a normal RAI HC vision score rules out a need for eye care. The optometrist screening found vision abnormalities more often than RAI HC in this small home-care sample, but the study was cross-sectional, not random, and does not prove that RAI HC is invalid.