Prevalence of dry eye disease in the elderly A protocol of systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction: Dry eye disease (DED) is one of the most prevalent ocular diseases which remains widely underestimated. New lifestyles driven by information technology and the rapid ageing process have brought DED a severe public health concern. And DED is highly related to the reduction in vision-related quality of life and interfere with daily activities. Since advanced age has been suggested as an important risk factor for DED, the aim of our study was to obtain the pooled prevalence of DED in the elderly over 60 years of age. Methods and analysis: The following databases will be searched from their inception to August 2020: Electronic database includes PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Nature, Science online, Chinese Biomedical Database WangFang, VIP medicine information, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Primary outcomes: the number of participants and DED cases. Data will be extracted by 2 researchers independently, risk of bias of the meta-analysis will be evaluated based on the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. All data analysis will be conducted by data statistics software Review Manager V.5.3. and Stata V.12.0. Results: The results of this study will systematically evaluate the prevalence of DED in the elderly population over 60 years of age. Conclusion: The systematic review of this study will summarize the current published evidence of epidemiological investigations of DED with advanced age classification. Ethics and dissemination: This study is a systematic review, the outcomes are based on the published evidence, so examination and agreement by the ethics committee are not required in this study. We intend to publish the study results in a journal or conference presentations.