Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: To report the incidence of blindness from retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) at a single medical center from January 1993 through December 1997. Methods: A retrospective chart review of a consecutive series of inborn babies managed with a consistent treatment protocol for laser and vitrectomy at the William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Michigan. All children were screened at less than 31 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA) or 4 weeks after birth. Retinopathy was graded by the International Classification of Retinopathy of Prematurity. Results: 1452 eyes of 726 patients met inclusion criteria and were screened. 80 eyes (5.5%) of 40 patients reached threshold for laser treatment per the CryoROP study definition of stage 3 threshold disease. Of the 80 eyes treated with laser, 5 eyes underwent lens–sparing vitrectomy (LSV) for predominantly tractional stage 4A ROP, 1 eye underwent LSV for predominantly tractional stage 4B ROP and, in the single patient with bilateral stage 5 ROP, 1 eye underwent lensectomy–vitrectomy (LV) and the fellow eye underwent LV and scleral buckling. The child with bilateral stage 5 ROP was lost to follow–up, leaving 6 eyes with complete follow–up. 5 of these 6 eyes (83%) had reattached retinas; the remaining eye's retina could not be reattached and resulted in no–light–perception (NLP) vision. The single NLP eye represents 1.25% of eyes reaching stage 3 ROP threshold, or 0.07% of all eyes that were screened. Conclusions:Among a large sample of patients at risk for ROP, the screening and treatment protocol at our institution yielded a low rate of blindness. For those eyes that reached stage 3 threshold disease, the incidence of blindness from acute ROP was 1.25%.
Keywords: retinopathy of prematurity • retinal detachment • laser