Recent trends of refractive surgery rate and detailed analysis of subjects with refractive surgery: The 2008-2015 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The present study was conducted to investigate recent trends of refractive surgery rates and analyze subjects undergoing refractive surgery using large-scale population studies over the past 8 years. We used the dataset of the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, a nationwide population-based cross-sectional study which were performed from 2008 to 2015. Of the 21,415 participants aged 20 to 49 years, 1,621 had refractive surgeries. Seventy three percent of them were females and 81% of them were aged under 40 years old. Over the past 8 years, cumulative prevalence of refractive surgery rate increased more than 10%. Although young (< 40 years, odds ratio (OR) 0.31, P<0.001) women (OR 1.86, P<0.001) living in urban areas (OR 0.51, P<0.001) with high educational attainment (OR 2.67, P<0.001) and income levels (OR 3.16, P<0.001) accounted for a high proportion in refractive surgery group through all survey years, subgroup analyses revealed that gaps between genders (ORs 3.8 in 2008-2009, 2.1 in 2010-2012, and 1.5 in 2013-2015), educational level (ORs 3.0, 2.5, and 2.1, respectively), and highest/lowest quartiles of household income (ORs 5.2, 2.6, and 2.4, respectively) were decreasing over time. Overall, our study suggests that refractive surgery has reached an age where the majority accepts it, and indeed more and diverse people are undergoing refractive surgeries.