Abstract
Purpose :
To determine follow-up rates by age, gender, and race, in patients who have been diagnosed with proliferative diabetic retinopathy.
Methods :
A total of 8,500 patients were identified in the Mid Atlantic Retina Practice who were diagnosed with proliferative diabetic retinopathy from the 4/2/2012 to 11/21/2016. After stratifying by age, gender, and race, loss to follow-up rates were calculated at 4-months, 1-year or 2-year time points. Loss to follow-up was defined based on any encounter date which preceded 11/21/2016 by either 4-months, 1-year or 2-year time points.
Results :
Out of the original 8,500 patients identified, 1976 were excluded due to insufficient data on race status. There was a statistically significant difference in follow up rates between different races at the 4-month time point, with 570 out of 1570 African Americans patients (33%), 1655 out of 4525 White patients (36%), and a 100 out of 270 Asian patients (37%) following up in 4-months (P=0.025). However, there were no significant differences in follow up rates between individuals of African American, White, or Asian descent at both 1-year and 2-year follow-up time points (P=0.176 and P=0.325 respectively). There was no significant difference in follow-up rates between males and females at 1 and 2-year follow up time points (P=0.478, and P=0.779 respectively). Only 2340 patients were included for the age analysis due to insufficient data on the remaining patients. There was a statistically significant difference in follow-up rates between different age groups, with 286 out of 357 (80.1%) patients aged 20 to 49 years, 987 out of 1359 (72.6%) patients aged 50 to 69 years, and 347 out of 624 (55.6%) patients aged greater than 70 years following up in 1- year (P<0.001).
Conclusions :
There was no significant difference in in follow-up rates in patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy by race or gender at 1 and 2-year follow-up time points. There was, however, a significant difference in follow up rates between different races at 4-month follow-up, and between different age groups at 1-year follow-up. .
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.