Abstract
Purpose
To study the frequency of exfoliation syndrome (XFS) and its association with intraocular pressure (IOP) and systemic diseases in patients with age-related cataract scheduled for surgery.
Methods
All 1480 cataract patients had a comprehensive systemic and eye examination, including slit-lamp biomicroscopy before and after mydriasis, IOP measurement, gonioscopy, and fundus examination.
Results
The percentage of XFS among patients scheduled for cataract surgery was 16.4, with no gender difference (p=0.833). The mean age of XFS patients (74.3±7.0 years) was significantly higher when compared to the ones without XFS (66.5±10.9 years) (p<0.001). XFS was unilateral in 41.3% of the subjects and bilateral in 58.7%. The number of subjects with XFS increased significantly with aging (p<0.001) (OR=1.093, 95% CI=1.073–1.14) (p<0.001). The most common type of cataract was nuclear in the XFS group (33.5%) and 24.6% of patients with mature cataract had XFS. In the XFS group, 11.2% of the subjects had glaucoma, which was statistically higher than the non-XFS group (4.6%) (p<0.001) (OR=2.67, 95% CI=1.65–4.32). Eighty-four patients had glaucoma and 27 of them (32.1%) had exfoliative glaucoma. The only systemic disease that was found to be associated with XFS was coronary heart disease with an OR of 1.49 (95% CI=1.068–2.072) (p=0.019).
Conclusions
XFS is a common problem in the aging cataract population of Turkey and increased IOP, glaucomatous optic neuropathy, and coronary heart disease occur more frequently in patients with XFS compared with subjects without XFS.
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