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Abstract
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 12 113 participants had evidence of infectious keratitis-related CO with a mean age of 63.3 (±14.7 SD) 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 <3 mm 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.
- cornea
- epidemiology
- public health
- vision
- infection
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplemental information. Not applicable.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplemental information. Not applicable.
Footnotes
Contributors NR: literature search and compilation, data analysis and interpretation, drafting and writing of manuscript. NG: study conception and design, data collection and acquisition, data analysis and interpretation, critical revision of manuscript, revision of manuscript for important intellectual content, technical support, responsible for the overall content,guarantor, accepts full responsibility for the work and/or the conduct of the study, had access to the data, and controlled the decision to publish. PV: study conception and design, critical revision of manuscript, administrative, technical and material support, supervision. RT: study conception and design, data interpretation, revision of manuscript for important intellectual content, supervision. DK: study conception and design, data collection and acquisition, data analysis and interpretation, drafting and writing of manuscript, technical support.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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