Abstract
Purpose :
Investigate healthcare burden of ocular inflammatory disease (OID) by quantifying cumulative patient visits per OID anatomic category using the American Academy of Ophthalmology IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight).
Methods :
Uveitis and scleritis OID cases were defined by International Classification of Diseases (ICD) Ninth and Tenth Revision codes during the year 2017. The number of patients with an OID code in 2017 estimated the burden of acute and chronic OID. New onset OID presentations in 2017 were identified in patients with ≥ 1 year of follow-up prior to 2017 and no history of OID. Follow-up visit counts for patients in this group (the “inception cohort”) with ≥ 2 years of follow-up were calculated per OID category. Postprocedural and infectious OID cases were excluded.
Results :
A total of 1,284,326 unique patients received at least one ICD-9 or ICD-10 code for OID at any point in time. Of 32,342,880 patients present in 2017 in the IRIS registry, 527,276 (1.64%) had an OID code at any time prior to or during 2017. 231,688 (0.72%) of these patients received an OID code at some point during 2017. The inception cohort held 20,976,976 patients, of whom 44,868 (0.21%) received a first-ever OID diagnosis in 2017. Patients without OID had an average number of 3.30 visits over 2 years, while the average for OID patients was 12.46 visits. Among OID categories panuveitis had the highest average (17.46) while scleritis had the fewest follow-up visits (8.18).
Conclusions :
Over 1.5% of patients present in 2017 had a history of OID. In the inception cohort, 0.21% had their first diagnosis of OID during 2017. Patients with OID had ~4x the visit frequency compared to patients without OID. Patients with OID account for a disproportionately high burden of ophthalmic care.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.