Population-based study on the prevalence, clinical characteristics and vision-related quality of life in patients with corneal opacity resulting from infectious keratitis: results from the Corneal Opacity Rural Epidemiological study

摘要

Aim To estimate prevalence and characterise clinical features and vision-related quality of life (VR-QoL) of corneal opacities (COs) resulting from infectious keratitis in a rural North Indian population. Methods The Corneal Opacity Rural Epidemiological study was a cross-sectional study conducted in 25 randomly selected clusters of rural Gurgaon, Haryana, India to determine prevalence of corneal disease across all age groups. During house-to-house visits, sociodemographic details, presence, type and clinical characteristics of corneal disease, laterality and resultant visual impairment (VI) was noted. Subgroup analysis of data was performed to understand the prevalence, clinical characteristics, VR-QoL in patients with CO due to infectious keratitis. VR-QoL scores were compared with healthy controls. Results Overall, 65 of 12113 participants had evidence of infectious keratitis-related CO with a mean age of 63.3 (14.7SD) years. Prevalence of infectious keratitis-related CO, including both bilateral (12/65) and unilateral (53/65) cases was 0.54 (95 CI 0.41 to 0.66) seen in a total of 77 eyes of 65 participants. Mean visual acuity was 1.18 +/- 0.80 with 30/77 (38.9) eyes having a presenting visual acuity <3/60. Most of the CO due to infectious keratitis was <3mm in size (61.03; 47/77), nebular (42.85; 33/77) and central (49.35; 38/77) in location. These participants had significantly higher VR-QoL scores and hence poorer VR-QoL across all three domains of vision function (scores of 28 vs 22, 7.5 vs 5 and 15.5 vs 9, respectively; p<0.0001) when compared with healthy controls. Conclusion The data from this study give an insight into the burden and clinical characteristics of COs resulting from infectious keratitis. VR-QoL is significantly impaired in patients with CO resulting from infectious keratitis, both in bilateral and unilateral cases.