Epidemiology of strabismus among adults in the United States: insights from the All of Us database.

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the prevalence of adult-diagnosed strabismus and its associations with sex, age, and race in a large, diverse population database in the United States.

Methods: Sex, age, and race data were collected from 413,457 individuals in the All of Us database. The χ² test with post hoc pairwise comparisons was used to determine significant differences in distributions of sex, age, and race data in 3,734 strabismus patients compared with the overall database.

Results: There is a higher proportion of males among patients with strabismus compared with the overall database (43.34% vs 38.34% [P < 0.001]). There is a significantly higher proportion of patients aged over 65 years among patients with strabismus compared with the overall database (45.77% vs 24.7% [P < 0.001]). There is also a significantly different racial distribution of individuals with strabismus compared with the overall database (P < 0.001). Pairwise comparisons showed a significantly lower proportion of Asian individuals among patients with strabismus or heterotropia, a lower proportion of Black individuals with most subtypes, and a higher proportion of White individuals among patients with any strabismus.

Conclusions: These results suggest that there is a lower proportion of females, Asian, and Black participants with diagnosed strabismus compared with the overall population in the All of Us database. These findings may indicate that strabismus affects patient populations differently, or that there is differential access to care and diagnosis of strabismus across sex, age, and race.