Purpose
Nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy remains a diagnosis for people older than 50 years old. We aim to describe the demographic characteristics and risk factors associated with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy in patients younger than 50 years old in a reference center in Mexico City.
Methods
Retrospective analysis of the medical records of all the patients diagnosed with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy from September 2007 to November 2014 in a reference center in Mexico City. We include age, sex, best-corrected visual acuity and comorbilities associated. We exclude those patients with an incomplete record.
Results
We found 1967 medical records with the diagnosis of nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. 177 patients were younger than 50 years old (ranged: 2 -49 years-old). 110 females 67 males. 23.16% presented dyslipidemia (41 patients), 22.60% with diabetes mellitus type 2 (40 patients) and 19.77% primary systemic hypertension (35 patients). Thirteen patients (7%) presented with a history of trauma, 4.51% (8 patients) with hemorrhagic or ischemic cerebral vascular event and 2.8% with a cerebral tumor (5 patients). In the group of patients younger than 30 years old a repetitive antecedent of neonatal hypoxia was found (12 patients, 6.7%) and only one case with hereditary optic neuropathy.
Conclusions
In this study we found that the comorbidity such as dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus and hypertension represented the most significant risk factors for presenting with nonarteritic ischemic optic neuropathy. This is the first information obtained in latinamerican population. We believe that the Mexican diet and lifestyle could have an important impact in its development and more studies need to be done.