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Background
Uveitis is composed of a diverse group of disease entities, which in total has been estimated to cause approximately 10% of blindness worldwide. It is among the major cause of visual impairment and morbidity in the developing countries, uveitis can be of many causes but the common ones are viral, bacterial, parasitic and fungal. The pattern of uveitis greatly varies due to genetical, geographical and socio economic factors. Anterior uveitis is, however, the commonest form of uveitis with varying incidences reported in literature. The etiology and visual outcomes of uveitis is still not yet known in Kilimanjaro Christian medical center.
Objective
To determine the etiologic factors and visual prognosis of uveitis patients at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre.
Methodology
This is a hospital based descriptive cross sectional study, the study involved all people of all ages diagnosed to have uveitis and who attended eye department clinic in 2015. Data collection was through designed forms based on specific objectives, the study based on the information of all people of all ages that is on the files, the data was collected, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS statistical package.
Results
There were 122 participants, the mean age was 46.72 (SD± 19). Most of participants were female 62 (50.8%). The commonest etiologies of uveitis were idiopathic followed by trauma and lastly infection. The proportion of patients with uveitis on the year 2015 was calculated to be 1.76%. Mean visual acuity in Log MAR on the worse affected eye showed an improvement of 0.27 and for the better eye 0.021. The mean intraocular pressure before treatment was 18.16 (SD 10.332) and 15.87 (SD 7.92) after treatment, this showed an improvement with 2.29 drop in the intraocular pressure.
Conclusion
The proportion of patient with uveitis at KCMC was 1.76%. Most common cause of uveitis was idiopathic followed by trauma and infectious causes. It was evident that overall visual acuities at presentation and after treatment improved similarly with the intra ocular pressures, this shows that the treatment offered improved the vision. |
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