Abstract
Purpose: :
1) To assess the demographics, characteristics, anatomic and functional outcomes in children who underwent surgical repair of ruptured globes (RG) at New Jersey Medical School; 2) To compare the demographics and outcomes of two groups: Group A, ages between 0-9 years and B, between 10-17 years.
Methods: :
Retrospective chart review of pediatric (ages 0-17) patients who underwent RGR between 1997 and 2005.
Results: :
Forty-eight (n=48) surgical eyes were identified. The mean age was 8.6 years (range: 0-17); 36 patients were males and 12 were females. Analysis of demographic, gender, and age-groups revealed the following: a. Poor post-operative visual acuity, VA (less than or equal to 20/200) was associated with older (10-17 year-old) children. b. The etiology of trauma strongly correlated with final VA. Final VAs of patients with sharp object-related trauma were better than 20/200 in 14 of the 23 of the patients, as opposed to 5 out of 17 for blunt trauma and 1 out of 6 for ballistic object trauma. c. Functional outcome was much better in female patients than male patients.
Conclusions: :
The results suggest that etiology of eye trauma, age and gender of the patient may have a significant correlation with final visual acuity. These factors along with the ocular trauma score should be taken into consideration when discussing the post-operative visual prognosis in such patients.
Keywords: clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: outcomes/complications • trauma • visual acuity