Prevalence of Psychiatric Illness Among Keratoconus Patients.

Abstract

Background Keratoconus is a chronic corneal disorder characterized by progressive thinning of the cornea resulting in visual deterioration. Keratoconus patients have a higher rate of psychiatric morbidities. Therefore, this study will assess the prevalence of psychiatric illness among keratoconus patients. Methods We conducted a quantitative retrospective study in three centers across Saudi Arabia from June 2016 to February2023. We includedall patients previously diagnosed with keratoconus and any psychiatric illness. We excluded patients with other ocular diseases in addition to keratoconus. After we extracted the data, we coded and analyzed them using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 21.0 (2012; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States) and GraphPad Prism Version 8.4.2 (Dotmatics, Boston, Massachusetts, United States). Results The study included 57 keratoconus patients, with the majority being Saudi (96.5%), female (2:1), in the age group of 31-40 years (40.4%), and with a high-schoollevel of education. The majority ofpatientswere alsoobese (42.4%) andnon-smokers (82%).Mostpatients had comorbid medical disorders. Of the 57 patients,63.2% had anxietydisorders, 56.1% had depression, 10.5% had schizophrenia, and 1.8% had bipolar disorder. Patients with only a primary-school level of educationwere significantlymore likely to bediagnosed with bipolar disorder, whereas those who were single were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Corneal transplant was also significantly associated with schizophrenia. Most patients (51%) were diagnosed with a psychiatric illness before keratoconus was diagnosed. Conclusion Among the keratoconus patients, single relationship status, primary-school level of education, and comorbidities weresignificantly associatedwith schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder, respectively. In addition, corneal transplant was significantly associatedwith schizophrenia. Lastly, the occurrence of psychiatric illness beforekeratoconus diagnosis was observed in the majority of patients.