By the numbers
Published on June 7th, 2019 by Christina Echegaray.
Summer 2019
An estimated 3 percent of Tennessee’s 1.2 million children have some type of eye problem other than a need for glasses.
The Tennessee Lions Pediatric Eye Center, with the help of Lions Club members across the state of Tennessee, has an outreach program providing free vision screening to identify children with eye problems.
- The Lions Eye Center opened Aug. 23, 1997.
- The pediatric ophthalmology team sees patients as young as premature newborn babies and into young adulthood. Premature infants can have a condition called Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP).
- Since 2004, the center has recorded 170,550 patient visits, averaging about 12,000 per year.
- The most common vision condition treated at the center is amblyopia, or lazy eye, which affects 3 percent of the pediatric population.
- The center’s patients travel from across Tennessee’s 95 counties, from 45 states and from countries abroad, including Haiti, Taiwan and European countries.
