Patterns of visual loss in untreated sickle cell retinopathy

Abstract

Ophthalmic assessments of 120 patients with homozygous sickle cell (SS) disease and of 222 with sickle cell haemoglobin-C (SC) disease were conducted over a period of ten years. Visual acuity loss (V.A. ≤6/18) attributable to sickle cell retinopathy occurred in 10% of untreated eyes during a mean observation period of 6.9 years. Visual loss was strongly associated with proliferative sickle retinopathy (p<0.001) and most commonly resulted from vitreous haemorrhage, fractional retinal detachment and epiretinal membranes. The incidence of visual loss was 31 per 1000 eye-years observation among eyes with proliferative disease compared to 1.4 per 1000 eye-years observation among eyes with non-proliferative disease. © 1988, College of Ophthalmologists. All right reserved.