Elsevier

Ophthalmology

Volume 117, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 313-319.e1
Ophthalmology

Original article
The Prevalence of Retinal Vein Occlusion: Pooled Data from Population Studies from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia

Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2008, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2009.07.017Get rights and content

Objective

To summarize the prevalence of retinal vein occlusion (RVO) from studies in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Design

Pooled analysis using individual population-based data.

Participants

Individual participant data from population-based studies around the world that had ascertained RVO from fundus photographs.

Methods

Each study provided data on branch RVO and central RVO by age, sex, and ethnicity. Prevalence rates were directly age and sex standardized to the 2008 world population aged 30 years and older. Estimates were calculated by study and, after pooling, by ethnicity. Summary estimates included studies in which RVO was assessed from fundus photographs on ≥2 fields of both eyes.

Main Outcome Measures

Any RVO, CRVO, or BRVO.

Results

The combined pooled data contained 68,751 individuals from 15 studies, with participants' ages ranging from 30 to 101 years. In analyses of 11 studies that assessed ≥2 fundus fields of both eyes (n=49,869), the age- and sex-standardized prevalence was 5.20 per 1000 (confidence interval [CI], 4.40–5.99) for any RVO, 4.42 per 1000 (CI, 3.65–5.19) for BRVO, and 0.80 per 1000 (CI, 0.61–0.99) for CRVO. Prevalence varied by race/ethnicity and increased with age, but did not differ by gender. The age- and sex-standardized prevalence of any RVO was 3.7 per 1000 (CI, 2.8–4.6) in whites (5 studies), 3.9 per 1000 (CI, 1.8–6.0) in blacks (1 study), 5.7 per 1000 (CI, 4.5–6.8) in Asians (6 studies), and 6.9 per 1000 (CI, 5.7–8.3) in Hispanics (3 studies). Prevalence for CRVO was lower than BRVO in all ethnic populations. On the basis of these data, an estimated 16.4 million (CI, 13.9–18.9) adults are affected by RVO, with 2.5 million (CI, 1.9–3.1) affected by CRVO and 13.9 million (CI, 11.5–16.4) affected by BRVO. Study limitations include non-uniform sampling frames in identifying study participants and in acquisition and grading of RVO data.

Conclusions

Our study provides summary data on the prevalence of RVO and suggests that approximately 16 million people may have this condition. Research on preventive and treatment strategies for this sight-threatening eye disease is needed.

Financial Disclosure(s)

Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found after the references.

Section snippets

Study Selection and Inclusion

A systematic review of the literature for all relevant population-based studies that undertook retinal photography was conducted. We searched all English language and human subject articles using a keyword search of MEDLINE (1950 to November 13, 2008), EMBASE (<1966 to December 18, 2008), Current Contents (1999 to December 18, 2008), and the Cochrane Library (to December 18, 2008) using the following search terms: retinal photography OR retinal images OR fundus photography AND population based.

Results

Overall, we collated data for 68,751 participants from 15 studies from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Of these participants, 43.7% were male, 48.4% were white, 27.1% were Asian, 17.2% were Hispanic, and 7.2% were black. Summary characteristics of each of the included studies are presented in Table 1; detailed characteristics of the participants in each of these studies have been described in previous publications (Table 1).

The majority of studies were conducted in only 1 ethnic

Discussion

The pooling of individual-level data from studies from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia allowed us to estimate more precisely the prevalence of RVO in the general adult population. On the basis of approximately 50,000 people from 11 studies that had assessed RVO from fundus photographs of 2 or more fields taken from each of the 2 eyes per participant, we estimate an age- and sex-standardized prevalence of 4.42 per 1000 persons for BRVO and 0.80 per 1000 persons for CRVO. The

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  • Cited by (0)

    Manuscript no. 2009-189.

    Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have made the following disclosure(s):

    Authors Kowalski and Nguyen are both employees of Allergan Inc., which provided funding for this project.

    Funding for the data pooling analysis was provided by Global Health Outcomes Research, Allergan, Inc, Irvine, California.

    Group members of the International Eye Disease Consortium are listed in Appendix 1, available at http://aaojournal.org.

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