Survey of Traumatic Glaucoma in a Tertiary Hospital

Abstract

Background: Traumatic eye injury is one of the most common causes of unilateral blindness worldwide and it remains a core root of avoidable blindness worldwide. Traumatic glaucoma can result in severe visual impairment. Recognition of factors related to poor visual outcome, appropriate medical therapy, surgical intervention when indicated and careful follow up will help in preserving vision in these patients. This study is aimed at determining the frequency, clinical forms and types of therapy of traumatic glaucomas as seen in our hospital. Methods: All consecutive patients with ocular injury who received treatment at the eye clinic of Ekiti state university teaching hospital, Ado Ekiti, from January 2012 to December 2014 were selected for the study. All subjects had thorough ophthalmic examinations. The patients with ocular injury and subsequently developed glaucoma were selected extracting from the medical records the demographic data, visual acuity at presentation, clinical form of glaucoma and various therapies for management. The data were analysed using SPSS version 18 (Illinois, Chicago, USA) and presented as tables, and figures, in frequencies, percentage. Result: A total of 5568 patients were seen during this study at the ophthalmology clinic, 365 of them had ocular trauma out of which 31(8.5%) was traumatic glaucoma. Peripheral anterior synerchae (29%), adherent leucoma (16.1%) and Hyphema (16.1%) were the common clinical manifestations (anatomic changes) of traumatic glaucoma. The clinical types of traumatic glaucoma are secondary open angle glaucoma (54.8%) which is higher than the secondary closed angle type (45.2%). 22 (71%) of these patients had medical interventions with antiglaucoma drugs. Conclusion: The prevalence of traumatic glaucoma is 8.5%, this glaucoma may result in severe visual impairment if treatment is not instituted early.