Epidemic situation of cataract prevalence in the Voronezh Region

Abstract

Cataract is one of the most common causes of vision loss, which determines the relevance of epidemiological studies. The purpose of this work was to assess the epidemic situation of cataracts among the adult population of the Voronezh region for 2015–2019. The material of the study was the data of the reporting form No. 12 of Rosstat for 2015–2019. A retrospective epidemiological analysis of the indicators of general morbidity, growth/decline rates, average annual growth/loss rates in the Voronezh region, Voronezh, and the administrative territories of the region was carried out. To assess the distribution of indicators in the interval series, the percentile method was used. Data processing was carried out using the Microsoft Excel program, the Student’s t-test was used to test statistical hypotheses, the significance level (p) was less than 0.05. According to the results of the analysis, the prevalence of cataracts in the Voronezh region and Voronezh for 2015–2019 was characterized by a moderate upward trend. In Voronezh, the indicators of general morbidity were significantly higher than the regional average. The level of cataract prevalence in the Voronezh Region was characterized by pronounced unevenness. The ranking of the administrative districts of the Voronezh Region was carried out using the percentile method and by the level of the tendency to increase/decrease in the average annual indicator. Stabilization of the epidemic process of cataracts was observed only in one district of the region — Ostrogozhsky. The rest of the territory of the region was conditionally divided into 2 parts: in half of the districts there was a tendency to increase, in the second half — to decrease. The level of the average annual growth rate in areas with a pronounced tendency to growth averaged 43.49 ± 7.58 %, the level of the average annual rate of decline in areas with a pronounced tendency to decrease morbidity averaged –23.79 ± 2.69 %. Thus, the epidemiological analysis of the data made it possible to determine the main trends in the overall incidence of cataracts in the administrative districts and the Voronezh Region as a whole, to rank the territory by the level of prevalence and trends.