RESEARCH ARTICLE
Evaluation of a Public Child Eye Health Tertiary Facility for Pediatric Cataract in Southern Nigeria I: Visual Acuity Outcome
Roseline E. Duke1, *, Adedayo Adio2, Sidney K. Oparah3, Friday Odey4, Okon A. Eyo5
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2016Volume: 10
First Page: 119
Last Page: 125
Publisher ID: TOOPHTJ-10-119
DOI: 10.2174/1874364101610010119
Article History:
Received Date: 29/10/2015Revision Received Date: 14/1/2016
Acceptance Date: 16/1/2016
Electronic publication date: 29/04/2016
Collection year: 2016
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Purpose:
A retrospective study of the outcome of congenital and developmental cataract surgery was conducted in a public child eye health tertiary facility in children <16 years of age in Southern Nigeria, as part of an evaluation.
Materials and Method:
Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery with or without anterior vitrectomy was performed. The outcome measures were visual acuity (VA) and change (gain) in visual acuity. The age of the child at onset, duration of delay in presentation, ocular co-morbidity, non ocular co-morbidity, gender, and pre operative visual acuity were matched with postoperative visual acuity. A total of 66 children were studied for a period of six weeks following surgery.
Results:
Forty eight (72.7%) children had bilateral congenital cataracts and 18 (27.3%) children had bilateral developmental cataracts. There were 38(57.6%) males and 28 (42.4%) females in the study. Thirty Five (53%) children had good visual outcome (normal vision range 6/6/ -6/18) post-operatively. The number of children with blindness (vision <3/60) decreased from 61 (92.4%) pre-operatively to 4 (6.1%) post-operatively. Post operative complication occurred in 6.8% of cases six week after surgery. Delayed presentation had an inverse relationship with change (gain) in visual acuity (r = - 0.342; p-value = 0.005). Pre-operative visual acuity had a positive relationship with post operative change (gain) in visual acuity (r = 0.618; p-value = 0.000).
Conclusion:
Predictors of change in visual acuity in our study were; delayed presentation and pre-operative VA. Cataract surgery in children showed clinical benefit.
