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Ocular emergencies visits after corneal transplantation at a tertiary eye care hospital in Saudi Arabia

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Abstract

Purpose

To evaluate the characteristics of patients with post-keratoplasty complications and their presentation at an emergency center.

Design

Retrospective one-armed cohort study.

Methods

Data were evaluated on patients who underwent corneal grafts in 2019 and presented to an emergency unit. Data were collected on patient demographics, presenting symptoms, clinical details, diagnosis at emergency visit, final diagnosis, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) at presentation and at the last follow-up after management. Severe visual impairment (SVI) and graft rejection were tested for correlations to other factors.

Results

The study sample was comprised of 149 eyes of 124 patients with a mean age of 27.5 years. Keratoconus was the indication for keratoplasty in 94 (75.8%) patients. The main presenting symptoms were pain 57 (38.3%) and red eye in 52 (34.9%) patients. The median interval between emergency visit and keratoplasty was 1.6 years. There were 63 (42.3%) patients who had emergency visits due to suture-related problems. The rates of SVI and graft rejection at the time of discharge after managing emergencies in eyes with previous keratoplasty were 14.1% (95% CI 8.5; 19.7) and 13.4 (95% CI 7.9; 18.9), respectively. Keratoconus (OR = 22.8) and young age (P < 0.001) were negatively associated with SVI after management.

Conclusion

Patients with keratoplasty are at high risk for severe vision loss and should be counseled to seek urgent eye care for early detection and management of sight-threatening complications to improve graft survival and vision.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the research coordinator Mr. Faisal Al Hamidi for his invaluable help in this study.

Funding

This manuscript did not receive any funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emergency Department, King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital, PO box 7191, Riyadh, 11462, Saudi Arabia

    Tariq Almudhaiyan, Mohammed AlAmry & Huda AlGhadeer

  2. Research department, King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Rajiv Khandekar

  3. British Columbia Center for Epidemiologic and International Ophthalmology, UBC, Vancouver, Canada

    Rajiv Khandekar

Authors
  1. Tariq Almudhaiyan
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  2. Mohammed AlAmry
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  3. Rajiv Khandekar
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  4. Huda AlGhadeer
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Contributions

All authors participated in the interpretation of data, drafting or critical revision of the manuscript and approval of the final version of the manuscript and agreed with the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huda AlGhadeer.

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Conflict of interest

No conflict of interest was declared by the authors, and the authors declared that this study received no financial support. None of the authors reports other financial interests in terms of the presented study.

Ethical approval

The local ethics committee of the King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital approved the protocol, and it adhered to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. The nature of the study and its possible consequences were explained to study participants. All participants have given their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Informed consent

The study was registered with the institutional review board and clearance obtained from the ethics committee of the institution. Written consent from the patient(s) was also obtained. We hereby transfer, assign, or otherwise convey all copyright ownership, including any and all rights incidental thereto, exclusively to the journal, in the event that such work is published by the journal.

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Almudhaiyan, T., AlAmry, M., Khandekar, R. et al. Ocular emergencies visits after corneal transplantation at a tertiary eye care hospital in Saudi Arabia. Int Ophthalmol 42, 3897–3904 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-022-02410-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-022-02410-6

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