Prevalence of pediatric eye diseases in Assam, India — a hospital-based retrospective data

Abstract

Background: In a hospital setting, paediatric eye disease manifests itself in a complex network. It is essential to comprehend the scope of many common eye disorders in order to develop new evidence-based strategies for mitigating such disorders. The study aimed to investigate the hospital-based prevalence of pediatric ocular disorders of patients attending a tertiary eye care hospital. Material and methods: A three-year data from 2017–19 were extracted from the electronic medical records of Chandraprabha Eye Hospital, Assam, India. Refining the data was further carried out using the age criteria up to 18 years. The diagnosis for all the study subjects was taken into consideration and was further analyzed. The inclusion criteria included subjects within the range of 0–18 years reporting to the hospital during the study period. Subjects diagnosed with non-ocular problems, incomplete ophthalmological assessments, and those aged more than 18 years were excluded. Results: A total of 11807 relevant medical records were reviewed. Among the study subjects, 58.52% (n = 6910) were males. The mean (SD) age was 11.9 (4.8) years. Of the subjects 21.28% (n = 2513) were in age group 0–5 years, 42.39% (n = 5006) — in 6–11 years, and 36.31% (n = 4288) in 12–18 years. A total number of 152 pediatric ocular abnormalities were identified from the reviewed files. Myopia alone accounted for 19% of all, followed by vernal keratoconjunctivitis with 14.7%, followed by asthenopic presentation associated with non-strabismic binocular vision anomalies (7.4%), congenital nasolacrimal duct obstruction (2.9%), amblyopia (2.8%), and ocular injuries (2.7%). Conclusions: Refractive errors, allergic conjunctivitis, ocular injuries, amblyopia and squint, uveitis, congenital cataract, and non-strabismic binocular vision anomalies were identified as the most common pediatric ocular abnormalities seen in routine clinical practice, laying the groundwork for a standard protocol to evaluate and assess visual function in any case of pediatric anomaly.