Journal of Clinical Medicine
Trends in the Burden of Vision Impairment in Saudi Arabia, 1990–2023: A Global Burden of Disease Study Analysis
By Ahmed Alduais, Ahmed Alduais, Abdullah Alduais and 1 others.
Abstract
Background
Vision impairment (VI) in Saudi Arabia is common, largely preventable or treatable, and increasingly linked to chronic disease rather than solely to the causes that have historically dominated blindness. Recent Saudi-specific evidence places adult VI prevalence at approximately 17% and blindness at under 2%, with diabetic retinopathy affecting roughly one in three Saudi adults with diabetes; however, no study has yet examined how this burden has trended nationally over time using the full 1990–2023 window made available by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 round. This study quantified trends in the burden of VI in Saudi Arabia by severity, cause, sex, and age, and characterised the contribution of population ageing to the observed pattern.
Methods
This repeated cross-sectional trend analysis used GBD 2023 national-level modelled estimates for Saudi Arabia (1990–2023). The estimated annual percentage change (EAPC) was calculated via log-linear regression on age-standardised prevalence and years-lived-with-disability (YLD) rates. A Durbin-Watson check confirmed autocorrelation in every annual series, and because GBD point estimates carry their own reported uncertainty, EAPC confidence intervals were derived two further ways alongside the naive ordinary-least-squares (OLS) interval: a Newey-West heteroskedasticity- and autocorrelation-consistent (HAC) interval, and a Monte Carlo interval that resampled each annual estimate within its GBD-reported 95% uncertainty interval. A trend is reported here as confirmed only where all three methods agreed on direction, and as suggestive where they did not. Segmented-regression sensitivity checks, cause decomposition, and comparison of age-standardised against crude rates were used to characterise breakpoints and the contribution of ageing.