Purpose:
To study the demographics and ocular morbidity of pseudoexfoliation syndrome at a tertiary hospital eye clinic in Singapore.
Methods:
Retrospective review of all patients with pseudoexfoliation syndrome (PXF) encountered by a single ophthalmologist over a period of 37 months (1 July 2006 to 31 July 2009). Data on demographics, clinical examination findings and ocular co-morbidities were collected and analyzed.
Results:
Of the 3896 patients encountered during this period, a total of 93 patients (2.4%) were found to have PXF with the majority of the PXF patients (61%) being above 70 years old. Overall, no gender predisposition associated with PXF was observed. The major ethnic groups among the 93 PXF patients were Chinese (62.4%), Malays (9.7%) and Indians (24.7%). Using the z-test for 2 proportions, the prevalence of PXF was found to be significantly higher in the Indian population (7.8%) compared to the Chinese (1.8%, p < 0.0001) and Malay (3.4%, p = 0.04) populations. Glaucoma was present in 32 (21.9%) of the 146 eyes with PXF of which 29 (90%) had open angles. The major causes of visual impairment with best-corrected visual acuity of less than 6/18 among the PXF eyes were cataract (35/146=24.0%) and glaucoma (9/146=6.2%).
Conclusions:
This study suggests that PXF is not an infrequent encounter among the elderly Singapore eye clinic patients with an overall prevalence of 2.4%, being more common in Indians compared to Chinese and Malays. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study that examined the demographics of PXF in a local eye clinic population in Singapore. It is imperative for ophthalmologists to focus on the early detection of PXF in the elderly population and to monitor these patients for cataracts and glaucoma, the two main causes of visual impairment associated with PXF.
Keywords: anterior segment • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: biostatistics/epidemiology methodology • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence