Purpose
To survey the characteristics of urban young patients diagnosed with red eye at an outpatient clinic, and to acquire demographic specifics and differential diagnosis of these patients
Methods
Retrospective cross-sectional study. A total of 500 records of first time visit patients were randomly selected at the Comprehensive Ophthalmology Service of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the Zambrano Hellion Medical Center / Tecnológico de Monterrey between January 2012 and July 2014. Inclusion criteria were an age group between 10 to 20 years, in which the main complaint was red. Demographic data such as age and gender, clinical ophthalmologic findings, history of surgery, systemic comorbidities, extracted from archived files was recorded
Results
Among 500 under survey records in 151 (30.2%) the main complaint was red eye. Mean age of the patients was 14.8 (±17.1). 50.3% (76/151) were female and 49.6% (75/151) male 18 differential diagnosis were founded. The most common diagnosis was allergic conjunctivitis in 71 patients (47%), blepharitis in 23 (15.2%), and Dry eye in 11 (7.2%). Infectious diseases (including Staphylococcus aureus blepharitis) occurred in 7.3% (11) of the cases. Potentially vision-threatening ophthalmic conditions were present in 9.9% (15) of the patients, these included ocular trauma in 5 patients (3.3%), two cases of anterior idiopathic uveitis (1.2%) and chemical burn in 1 patient (0.65%). No gender difference was found for differential diagnosis, with exception of ocular trauma and corneal erosion that occurred more frequently in males (9:1) with a mean age of 16.9 (±2.1) years
Conclusions
Red eye represents one third of the main complaint of first time visits to an ophthalmology service. Allergic conjunctivitis is a key component in the spectrum of red eye differential diagnosis occurring in almost half of the red eye cases. A large variety of diagnosis were found. Vision-threatening conditions such as ocular trauma occurred in significant number of cases (9.9%) and those cases occurred mainly in older males. An infectious etiology was associated with the diagnosis of red eye in one of each 10 patients in this age group