Abstract
Purpose :
While an association between dry eye disease and idiopathic small fiber neuropathy (SFN) has been previously reported, the prevalence of other eye conditions in patients with SFN has not been determined. The purpose of this investigation is to report the prevalence of episcleritis and scleritis in patients with idiopathic SFN.
Methods :
The Mass General Brigham healthcare system database was queried for SFN patients with an eye exam, as well as for control patients without SFN with an eye exam. Natural language processing and diagnosis codes were used to search for the diagnoses of scleritis and episcleritis in these patients’ records. The diagnoses of episcleritis and scleritis were verified by chart review. Patients with co-existing autoimmune/infectious diseases that are associated with episcleritis and scleritis were excluded. The prevalence of episcleritis and scleritis was calculated. Clinical characteristics of patients with episcleritis and scleritis were determined. Prevalences of episcleritis and scleritis were compared between patients with and without SFN using the chi-square test.
Results :
From the total 5,604 SFN patients identified, 852 had an eye exam. There were 1,310,601 controls with an eye exam and without SFN identified. Of the 852 SFN patients with an eye exam, 11 patients had episcleritis or scleritis, yielding a prevalence of 1.3%. Of the episcleritis and scleritis patients, 7 (63.6%) were women and 4 (37.0%) were men. Eight (72.7%) had bilateral ocular disease. Four patients had only episcleritis, six patients had only scleritis, and one patient had both. The mean age of ocular diagnosis was 52.1 years (range, 22-77 years). Out of the 1,310,601 controls without SFN, 3,195 (0.24%) had scleritis and 2,884 (0.22%) had episcleritis. Episcleritis and scleritis were more prevalent in patients with SFN than in those without SFN: 0.59% vs. 0.22% (p-value = 0.023) for episcleritis and 0.82% vs 0.24% (p-value = 0.0006) for scleritis.
Conclusions :
Episcleritis and scleritis are present at higher rates in SFN patients than in the general hospital patient population.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.