Area Deprivation Index and Corneal Infection

In the August 2023 edition of JAMA Ophthalmology, Patrice Hicks and colleagues published a study about social factors and corneal infections.

The worse the vision when a patient comes in with a corneal infection and the later in the course of the infection that they come in, the worse the overall outcome will be. Dr. Hicks showed that social factors such as worse Area Deprivation Index lead to worse vision when a patient comes in. This likely leads to worse final outcomes as well and shows yet another health disparity related to social inequality.