Vision seen as more important than limbs

A third of patients have gone without an eye examination for the past two years despite ranking their vision highly in a global study.

In Bausch+Lomb's Global Eye Health Barometer, 69 per cent of a sample of 1,050 UK patients said they had been for a comprehensive eye exam in the last two years.

This figure was ahead of nine other developed optical markets, only equalled by France. In another outcome from the survey, 81 per cent of the UK respondents said that, hypothetically, they would rather lose their hearing than their eyesight, while 76 per cent would rather lose a limb than their eyesight.