Abstract
Purpose :
Anophthalmic Cavity Syndrome is an entity that may present after removal of the ocular globe by evisceration or enucleation, including signs and symptoms such as mucoid discharge, pruritus, conjunctival erythema, and dryness of the anophthalmic socket, which has been thought to be a consequence of the morphological changes seen in the Meibomian glands. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Meibomian gland loss in people with ocular prosthesis, compared to the healthy, contralateral eye.
Methods :
Patients over 18 years old with unilateral ocular prosthesis were recruited from the Oculoplastic Department at the “Instituto de Oftalmología Conde de Valenciana”. Inclusion criteria were as following: ≥ 6 months of prosthesis use after enucleation/evisceration, at least 1 month without
Sociodemographic characteristics were collected, and the DEQ-5 Dry Eye Questionnaire was applied for each eye. Meibography and tear meniscus height measurements were performed using the Oculus Keratograph 5M Topographer (OCULUS, Inc., Germany). Chi square test was applied for inferential analysis of qualitative variables, while Shapiro test to determine the distribution of the variables was used for quantitative variables, with posterior application of T test and ANOVA. All analysis were carried out using R Studio packages version 2023.03.
Results :
20 eyes of 20 patients were included, 8 were female (40%). Using the DEQ-5 Questionnaire, dry eye symptoms on the side with ocular prosthesis were evaluated in comparison to the healthy eye, with an OR 0.33 and chi square 13.29 (p= 0.001). For conjunctival hyperemia and tear meniscus hight, chi square test was performed, with statistical significance between both eyes (p=0.001). Regarding Meibomian gland loss, only the superior eyelid chi square test was statistically significant (p=0.001).
Conclusions :
Our study found a statistical difference in dry eye symptoms, conjunctival hyperemia, tear meniscus height and superior eyelid meibomian gland loss, compared to the contralateral healthy eye, which may be attributable to the constant eyelid contact with the prosthesis. Further research is needed to assess the changes present in the Meibomian glands and other palpebral adnexa of ocular prosthesis users.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.