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Purpose: Pediatric cataract blindness presents an enormous problem to developing countries in terms of human morbidity, economic loss and social burden. In Africa, cataract is the commonest cause of avoidable and treatable childhood blindness. Recently, the number of congenital cataract surgeries has increased dramatically in many Africa countries. However, basic information on visual outcome following bilateral congenital cataract surgery in Tanzania is lacking. This study therefore aims at establishing the visual outcome and the trend of intraocular pressure following surgery for bilateral congenital cataract in northern Tanzania.
Method: A retrospective cohort study was conducted. Data from a Child Eye Health Tertiary Hospital was collected from theatre records and medical records. We specifically collected number of bilateral congenital cataracts surgeries done, age at operation, pre and postoperative visual acuities, postoperative refraction, pre and postoperative intraocular pressure and congenital ocular anomalies. This was done for the years of 2005 to 2014. Quantitative data entry into Stata Version 13.1 (STATA Corp., College Station, Texas 77845 USA) Computer program was done and they were analyzed.
Results: The median age at operation and follow up were 48.5 (21.0-98.0) and 4.1 (0.4- 24.1) weeks respectively. Out of 96 children, 56 (58.33%) had good postoperative visual acuity (VA) outcomes. The incidence rate to have good visual acuity outcomes was high among children followed up < 4 weeks compared to those followed up > 4 weeks and this difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). There were increased in HR for each ocular anomaly to have poor visual acuity outcomes but the one which have shown statically significant was corneal opacity (p< 0.05). .
Conclusion: There was an improvement on postoperative visual acuity outcomes after surgeries. Corneal opacity was found to be a risk factor for poor VA outcomes.
Key words: Outcomes; Bilateral Congenital Cataracts; Retrospective Cohort, Tanzania. |
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