Abstract
Purpose :
Screening for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a highly effective way to prevent blindness by untreated ROP. In Germany, prematurely born infants with either a gestational age (GA) below 32 weeks or more than 3 days of supplemental oxygen therapy receive ROP screening examinations. Other developed countries have recently lowered the GA limit for ROP screening to below 31 weeks or even below 30 weeks to increase screening specificity. To evaluate current German ROP screening criteria, we investigated the incidence of treatment-requiring ROP in infants with a GA of 30 weeks or more.
Methods :
Datasets of the German nationwide quality assurance procedure in neonatology (IQTIG) for the years 2011 to 2017 (n=52,462 infants in ROP screening), the German Retina.net ROP Registry for the years 2011 to 2018 (n=281 infants with treated ROP), and the ROP screening program of two German university hospitals (Bonn, Freiburg) for the years 2012 to 2016 (n=837 infants in ROP screening) were analyzed.
Results :
The number of infants requiring ROP screening has been rising continuously in Germany in the past years, with e.g. an increase of 43.1% over 5 years at two university hospitals. While infants with a high GA of 30 weeks and more accounted for 38.5% of the total ROP screening population, the majority (84.3%) of children developing treatment-requiring ROP had a low GA of 26 weeks or less. In a cohort of 281 children treated for ROP in the past 8 years at various German hospitals, 4 (1.4%) had a GA of 30 weeks or more (range, 30 weeks + 0 days to 37 weeks + 0 days) and none had a GA of 31 weeks (31 weeks + 0 days to 31 weeks + 6 days). A similar analysis of the German nationwide IQTIG neonatology database for the years 2011 to 2018 is ongoing.
Conclusions :
Prematurely born infants with a GA of 31 weeks account for a large proportion of the ROP screening population in Germany but exhibited no risk for developing treatment-requiring ROP in our study cohort. These findings are of relevance for the ongoing re-evaluation of the upper GA limit for ROP screening in Germany and other countries.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.