Abstract
Purpose: :
Retinal Vein Occlusion (RVO) is an important sight-threatening condition but precise world-wide epidemiological data are lacking. This study pooled data and summarized the prevalence of RVO in the US, Australia and Asia.
Methods: :
Population-based studies from the US (Beaver Dam Eye Study, BDES; Los Angeles Latino Eye Study, LALES; Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, ARIC; Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, MESA), Australia (Blue Mountains Eye Study, BMES) and Asia (Beijing Eye Study, Funagata Study, Singapore Malay Eye Study, SiMES) that measured RVO from fundus photographs were pooled for analyses. Each study provided data on type of RVO (branch or central), gender, race, and age. RVO cases included were graded or confirmed at either the Wisconsin or Sydney photographic grading center. Prevalence rates were directly age-standardized to the 2006 US non-institutionalized population aged >30 years. Estimates were calculated for each study and by race after pooling of all studies and those that assessed both eyes per participant.
Results: :
Data were available from 42,298 participants aged 35 to 101 years. Crude prevalence for RVO per 1000 ranged from 1.8 in ARIC to 18.9 in BMES. Age-gender-standardized prevalence rates for any RVO per 1000 people were 0.8 in ARIC, 4.1 in BDES, 5.7 in Beijing, 10.0 in BMES, 3.8 in Funagata, 8.2 in LALES, 3.2 in MESA and 5.1 in SiMES. Using data from only those studies that assessed both eyes, age-gender-standardized prevalence of RVO per 1000 was 6.1 in Whites (3 studies), 4.1 in Blacks (1 study), 5.2 in Asians (3 studies) and 6.8 in Hispanics (2 studies). Prevalence for central RVO (affecting 1.5 Whites, 0.4 Blacks, 0.9 Asians and 0.9 Hispanics per 1000 persons) was lower than branch RVO (4.7, 4.8, 4.4 and 5.9 per 1000, respectively). Limitations of analyses included lack of uniformity of sampling frames for each of the individual studies, differences in retinal photography and grading and resultant differences in false negatives and positives, as well as differences in measured and unmeasured confounders among studies.
Conclusions: :
RVO occurs in between 1 to 10 per 1000 adults across studies. Between 0.5 and 1.0% of Americans are estimated to be affected by RVO. There was no apparent gender or racial differences in RVO prevalence. Data pooling is limited by differences in methodology and population characteristics among studies.
Keywords: retina • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: biostatistics/epidemiology methodology