Abstract
Purpose :
Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a leading cause of childhood blindness worldwide. At the highest risk of developing the disease are severely premature (under 32 weeks gestational age) low birth weight (under 1500 grams) infants. As more babies are being born premature<span style="font-size:10.8333px"> </span>and more severely premature babies are surviving, cases of ROP are increasing.
The purpose of this study is to examine the association between risk factors for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and risk of blindness at long-term follow-up.
Methods :
Design
Case control of a retrospective cohort
Methods
Study population: Infants treated with cryotherapy for ROP between 1984 – 1999 were followed up to 2001.
Setting: St Mary’s Hospital and Queen Charlottes Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, United Kingdom.
Primary outcome: blindness (>1.3 LogMAR). WHO Definitions for Blindness was used.
Risk factors assessed: gestational age (GA), birth weight (BW), post-menstrual age (PMA) at treatment, gender, and treatment decade.
Missing data: Were assumed to be missing completely at random and a joint multiple imputation approach was employed.
Analysis: Univariate logistic regression models were created to assess the relationship between blindness and each risk factor.
Results :
Of 69 eyes in 35 infants, 26 (37.7%) eyes were blind. In the univariate analysis, only GA (OR 0.22, 95%CI 0.05-0.95, p=0.04) was shown to be a statistically significant risk factor for having at least one blind eye.
Conclusions :
For children born in the 1980s/1990s in this sample, gestational age proved to be a strong risk factor for being blind in one eye at long-term follow-up. Though birth weight, treatment post-menstrual age, gender nor decade treated proved to be statistically significant. A larger sample size as well as more data on other important risk factors including: weight gain, length of hospital stay and oxygenation history are needed in order to draw firmer conclusions.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.