Abstract
Purpose :
To establish the age of diagnosis of very mature cataracts and end-stage POAG in a sanitary ditrict of Southern Chad, Central Africa
Methods :
We reviewed the database of patients attended by the NGO Iluminafrica from 2010 to 2017.
Results :
In a 10 year period, Iluminafrica has covered 35 expeditions with a total of 15220 clinical consultations and 3680 surgical procedures. Out of these, 3385 were mature cataracts and the rest were orbital, pterigiae and lid procedures. Terminal glaucoma was also diagnosed in 2283 patients. Due to the severity and the great amount of cataracts, our criteria for cataract surgery was limited to a best vision of light perception (LP).The mean age of bilateral surgical cataract, unilateral surgical cataract and terminal glaucoma was 51, 55 and 34 years of age, respectively.
Conclusions :
The age of diagnosis of LP cataracts and terminal glaucoma is clarely lower than the age observed in western countries like Spain. There must be environmental and genetic factors that justify these differences. We hereby encourage to further investigate factors that could positively influence and prevent the apperance of young age cataracts and end-stage glaucoma.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.