Table 1.

A breakdown of patient's ages and sight test outcome found in the present study. Percentages are greater than 100 as patients can be referred and given a prescription (refractive) outcome or referred and nor given a prescription outcome.

Age group	Number of sight tests	Mean age ± SD (years)	New (or changed) prescription	Unchanged prescription	No prescription	Referred	% of total Essex population this age
Under 16	178,645	9.4 ± 3.5	80,198 (44.9%)	14,002 (7.8%)	82,010 (45.9%)	3330 (1.9%)	34.4
16–59	136,210	39.3 ± 14.8	105,979 (77.8%)	17,127 (12.6%)	11,135 (8.2%)	3871 (2.8%)	9.3
60 and above	349,623	72.7 ± 8.2	261,564 (74.8%)	72,062 (20.6%)	1783 (0.5%)	26,901 (7.7%)	59.3