earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to investigate the incidence rate, surgery tendency, and risk factors of cataracts among the elderly in Korea. The subjects were 40-95 years old men and women using the National Health Services’ surgical statistics. Among the 33 major surgeries, which increased by 1.1% per year for the last 20years (1.6 million), the most operated surgery in 2020 was cataract surgery (454,000), the number of which was 858.8 per 100,000 people. Among the surgical patients, cataract patients (7.9% increased) was the third largest among the top (2016-2020) constantly with annually 2.2% increasing for 20 years (19.95 million). The medical expenses of major surgeries (excluding non-benefit) increased by an average rate of 9.3% per year over the 20 years (7,204 billion won) out of a total medical expenses of 7.2 trillion won, and the cataract surgery (813.2 billion won) was the second largest among the medical expenses in 2020 (top 3). This study showed that there was a high correlation between cataract and smoking, low income, and low-educated, whereas being no concentration of cataract patient in tertiary hospitals.