Purpose:
To evaluate the epidemiology of comitant and incomitant strabismus in Italy between 1999 and 2003.
Methods:
This retrospective study included 21390 patients with age between less than 1 year to 14 years. We considered diagnostic and surgical data and estimated the incidence, type and numbers of surgical procedures. In 17082 patients (79,86 %) were performed surgical procedure; in 4308 (20,14%) patients no surgical practice were applied. Our study valuated different regimen of day care (85,38 %) and in-patient surgery (14,62 %).
Results:
All patients recieved as follows diagnosis: 3197 (18,7%) exotropia; 12658 (74,1%) esotropia; 49 (0,3%) hypotropia; 807 (4,7%) hypertropia; 371 (2,2%) restrictive strabismus not specified. In all surgical patients were performed different procedures: for one muscle in 10905 (63,8 %); for two or more muscles in 5787 (33,8%); for muscles and tendons in 227 (1,4%); for transposition in 63 (0,4%) and for surgical revision in 100 (0,6%).
Conclusions:
In these five years retrospective Italian study, we observed an increased of day care surgery instead of in-patient procedure. Usually kind of surgery practice was in one muscle approach. Although we considered many strabismus deviation, our results suggested a minimal reduction modify in incidence for esotropia (2,37%) and significant for exotropia (39%).
Keywords: strabismus • esotropia and exotropia • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence