The Prevalence of Depression and Depressive Symptoms among Eye Disease Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

The prevalence of depression among different eye disease patients varies across studies and has not been systematically reviewed. This study is to provide a summary of the prevalence of depression among eye disease patients. PubMed, Medline, Embase and Cochrane Library were searched from January, 1990 to December, 2015 to identify studies with information on the prevalence of depression among ophthalmic patients. A random/fixed-effects meta-analysis was used to estimate the pooled prevalence of depression among eye disease patients. Heterogeneity was assessed with the I(2) test. 28 studies were selected from 3162 references. The overall pooled prevalence of depression or depressive symptoms with eye disease was 25% (1502/6589 individuals, 95% CI, 0.20–0.30) ranging from 5.4% to 57.0%. Regarding different disease categories, the highest prevalence was revealed for dry eye disease (DED) with 29%, followed by 25% for glaucoma patients, 24% for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) patients, 23% for cataract patients. The increased pooled prevalence of depression was identified in those with eye diseases compared with healthy controls (OR, 1.59; 95% CI, 1.40–1.81; I(2) = 68.5%). Substantial heterogeneity was identified across most estimates (I(2) > 75%). Further research is needed to identify effective strategies for preventing and treating depression among eye disease patients.