Ocular Morbidity Profile of Elderly in Tertiary Care Hospital: A Hospital Based Study

Abstract

Introduction: Quantum of ocular morbidity in India especially in elderly has been increasingly high year over, probably due to their increasing population, higher longevity and unavailability of timely ophthalmic care as well as increasing life expectancy.Aim: To study the entire ocular morbidity profile of elderly people attending OPD in our Institution. Materials & Methods: The present study was thus designed to study the ocular morbidity profile of elderly people attending our Hospital. A hospital based cross-sectional study on ocular morbidities among elderly was conducted for a period from June 2019 to Decebmer 2020 after the institutional ethical clearance. A total of 1236 elderly patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria were enrolled, out of which 841 subjects were willing to participate in the study. All selected cases were subjected to history taking, personal interview, detailed ocular examination and necessary investigations as required. Data entry and analysis was done using Epi-info software.Results: Out of total 841 study participants, 433 (51.9%) were males and 408 (48.1%) were females with a male to female ratio of 1.06:1 with no statistical significant difference between the age groups and the gender. Refractive error was found to be the most common ocular morbidity among all the study participants followed by cataract, corneal opacity, retinopathies, glaucoma and ARMD. The other ocular morbidities were pterygium, dry eye, conjunctivitis, meibomitis, blindness, dacryocystitis, keratitis, endophthalmitis, entropion and blepharitis respectively. Conclusion: Thus It is required to define the priorities for eye care services based on the current population-based data.