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
1 Department of Ophthalmology, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria
2 Department of Ophthalmology, University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
3 Department of Medicine, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria
4 Department of Pediatrics, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria
5 Department of Community Medicine, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria


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Creative Commons License
© Duke et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

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.

* Address correspondence to this author at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Department of Ophthalmology, Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus Unit, Calabar, Nigeria; E-mail: dr.roselineduke@gmail.com


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.

Keywords: Bilateral cataracts, Clinical benefit, Congenital, Developmental, Outcome, Southern Nigeria, Visual acuity.