Visual disabilities lead to Mental and Physical Disabilities

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Why is it important to prevent visual loss and restore blindness in the elderly?  After all, they may not have too many more years to benefit from expensive interventions.  The study quoted in the attached link demonstrates that elderly individuals who develop significant visual loss (20%) also have significantly more physical and cognitive problems.  It stands to reason.  If you cannot take care of yourself - Drive to appointments, read instructions and prescriptions, etc it is going to be hard to do the necessary activities to provide adequate healthcare to themselves.  Further,  the simple act of doing these tasks are probably helpful in preserving physician and mental fitness.

Suggestion

We need to examine how extending additional care to the visually impaired will reduce other disparities in the health care so that these patients can lead more productive and meaningful lives.  This would involve earlier diagnosis of diseases that lead to visual loss but have little early symptoms - such as glaucoma.  We also need to find more accessible treatment options for those with treatable visual loss such as macular degeneration.  Possibly bringing this service to the patient in terms of more accessible delivery.  visual restoration with innovations and better use of existing technology to restore functional vision. Medicare will pay tens of thousands of dollars for surgical rehabilitation with such devices as a Intraocular Minature Telescopic Implant or a Retinal Prosthesis but will not pay a fraction of that for more conventional treatments and devices that have a greater chance of success.

Communities for the visually impaired could contain sharable audio libraries and other resources including health care facilities and transportation.  In addition, the housing could be specially designed for the visually impaired to make their day to day living less difficult and stressful.

I believe such efforts would be cost effective but even more beneficial in improving quality of life for our most experienced patients.