Allergic eye disease in children and adolescents seeking eye care in India: Electronic medical records driven big data analytics report II

Abstract

Purpose: To describe the demographics, clinical presentation and risk-factors of allergic eye disease (AED) in children and adolescents presenting to a multi-tier ophthalmology hospital network in India.

Methods: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study of 259,969 new patients (≤21 years of age) presenting between 2010 and 2018. Patients with a clinical diagnosis of AED were considered as cases. Data were collected using an electronic medical record system. Multiple logistic regression with odds ratios (OR) was performed to identify the high risk-factors of AED.

Results: Overall, 26,309 (10.1%) children and adolescents were diagnosed with AED. The prevalence of AED was 0.3%, 6.6%, 18.3%, 15.8%, 8.1%, and 4.9% in infancy (<1 years), toddlerhood (1-2 years), early childhood (3-5 years), middle childhood (6-11 years), early adolescence (12-18 years) and late adolescence (18-21 years), respectively. Most patients with AED presented in spring and summer. Palpebral vernal keratoconjunctivitis was the commonest clinical form, seen in 42.8% of eyes. Corneal scarring, keratoconus, limbal stem cell deficiency and shield ulcers were seen in 2.4%, 1.4%, 0.4% and 0.3% of eyes, respectively. Male sex (OR 2.05); early and middle childhood age groups (OR 66.6; 59.1); higher socio-economic class (OR 1.46) and history of systemic allergy (OR 3.74) were identified as high-risk factors of AED.

Conclusion: About a tenth of the children and adolescents seeking eye care in India are affected by AED, which commonly affects boys with atopy, from middle to higher income families during their early to middle childhood and shows a self-limiting trend by late adolescence.

Keywords: Allergic conjunctivitis; Allergic eye disease; Big data; Electronic medical records; Epidemiology; Vernal keratoconjunctivitis.