Purpose
To identify the epidemiological characteristics and the most common etiologies of Uveitis at the Uveitis Clinic, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Methods
A computerized database of the Uveitis Clinic at the University of Buenos Aires was queried for patients holding the diagnosis of Uveitis. All medical records of patients with uveitis seen at the clinic between January 2006 through September 2012 were retrospectively reviewed. Patients were classified according to the Standardization Uveitis Nomenclature Criteria.
Results
A total of 402 new patients were seen at the Uveitis Clinic during a period of 81 months. 341 out of 402 patients had uveitis. Patients with scleritis (n=35) and ocular pemphigus (n=26) were excluded.There were 218 female (64%) and 123 male (36%). The anatomical classification of uveitis were as follows: anterior uveitis 33.4 %; intermediate uveitis 8.2 %; posterior uveitis 28%; and panuveitis 30.4 %. Non-infectious etiology of uveitis was present in 63 %, being Vogt Koyanagi Harada disease the most frequent cause (34%). Infectious etiology of uveitis was observed in 37 % of cases. Ocular Toxoplasmosis was the most frequent (40.7%). According to the age, 10.55% of the patients were younger than 16 years and the most frequent diagnosis was juvenil rheumatoid arthritis in 36% of cases, while 89.44% were older than 16 years and Vogt Koyanagi Harada disease (22.9%) was the most frequent diagnosis.
Conclusions
Anterior uveitis and panuveitis were the most frequent anatomical types of uveitis in our study. Vogt Koyanagi Harada disease and ocular toxoplasmosis were the most common non-infectious and infectious etiologies respectively. The higher frequencies of these diagnosis are probably related to the demographic characteristics of our population where toxoplasmosis is an endemic parasitosis and to the tertiary referral level of our clinic.
Keywords: 745 uvea •
459 clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: biostatistics/epidemiology methodology