Abstract
Purpose :
Worldwide 15 million premature infants are born each year, one in ten will develop ROP and Latin America has 40% of cases of childhood blindness. Therefore, epidemiological knowledge is important to implement prevention and screening programs. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics in patients with ROP in a referral ophthalmology center, from January 2016 to December 2021.
Methods :
A retrospective, descriptive and observational study was done according to the Screening Guidelines for ROP in Mexico, so patients with a history of gestational age inferior to 34 weeks and/or birth weight lower than 1750g were included; data was collected from an electronic file of The Mexican Institute of Ophthalmology I.A.P. (IMO) in Queretaro, Mexico. The study included infants who received ophthalmologic screening for ROP between January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2021.
Gestational age, birth weight, perinatal history, supplementary oxygen use, maternal history, and staging of ROP were analyzed. incomplete medical records were excluded.
Statistical analysis was performed using the Pearson Statistical Correlation in SPSS IBM 24.0 for windows 10.
Results :
715 patients with a mean gestational age of 35.70 weeks (min 30 max 65, SD 3.80) were included, and mean birth weight of 1595.03gr (min 740 max 2195, SD 330.76), the ROP patients have mature retina in 16.1% and it was immature in 83.9%. The most prevalent ROP stage was 1 with 56.2%, followed by stage 2 with 29.6%, stage 3 with 11.6%, there was only 1.3% for both stage 4A and 4B, and there were no cases in stage 5. The most common zone was 2A in 42.8%. The Pearson test results was a positive correlation in all categories compared with ROP Stage and a negative correlation in all categories compared with the ROP zone.
Conclusions :
Currently, the population studied in our institute is in the third wave of ROP, as in India, since we are finding premature babies with higher weight and gestational age and with more retinopathy of prematurity, contrary to what happened in our previous study. It was also found that the lower the gestational age, the more immature retina. It is thought that there are not so advanced stages due to the timely screening we are carrying out and those with a higher stage are because they are referred from other hospitals or private pediatricians. We conclude that screening allows early control and treatment for our population.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.