Original article
Incidence and Prevalence of Uveitis in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers of the Pacific Northwest

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajo.2008.09.014Get rights and content

Purpose

To ascertain the frequency of uveitis in Veterans Affairs (VA) patients in the Pacific Northwest and to compare disease rates with those in previously published epidemiologic studies.

Design

Cross-sectional, population based-study.

Methods

The medical records of 152,267 patients seen at six VA Medical Centers in Oregon and Washington during fiscal year 2004 were searched for uveitis-related Internation Classification of Diseases 9th edition codes. Cases were reviewed and classified anatomically, by associated systemic disease, and as incident or prevalent. Only definite cases were used for disease rate calculations.

Results

This study found a crude incidence of 25.6 cases/100,000 person-years and a crude prevalence of 69 cases/100,000 persons. The most common anatomic location for uveitis was anterior. Approximately half of cases were idiopathic, with human leukocyte antigen-B27–related diseases being the most common identified cause. There was no statistical evidence of increased or decreased incidence with age, although uveitis seemed to be more prevalent in the younger age groups.

Conclusions

Our data are consistent with those of most published population-based studies on the epidemiologic features of uveitis, but we detected significantly lower incidence and prevalence than those reported in a recently published study from Kaiser Permanente. The significance of and possible explanations for the differences between our data and that published by the Kaiser group are discussed.

Section snippets

Methods

Data ascertainment consisted of searches for two sets of statistics relating to the numerator and denominator of our disease estimates. The numerator is an exact count of the numbers of definite uveitis cases identified from among all potential subjects seen at the six network facilities listed. A computerized search strategy using Microsoft Access (Redmond, Washington, USA) was designed to query retrospectively the VISN 20 Computerized Health Information and Performance Set database for all

Results

Age demographics in each VISN facility and total gender demographics are shown in Table 1. Men were in the majority in all age groups and were 92% of our study population, although women comprised a larger portion of the younger population.

Our search strategy identified 509 patient records with a potential diagnosis of uveitis. After record review, 126 subjects were judged to have had definite uveitis, of which 105 showed prevalent disease. Of the 105 prevalent cases, 39 were newly diagnosed

Discussion

This study sought to ascertain the incidence and prevalence of uveitis in the VA population and to compare these disease rate and frequency estimates with those from the NCEU Study. The crude incidence rates we found were lower by approximately half that ascertained by the NCEU Study. Direct adjustment for age and gender between our study and the NCEU Study populations further amplified the difference in incident and prevalent disease found between the two studies. This increase was the result

Eric Suhler, MD, MPH, is Chief of Ophthalmology at the Portland Veterans Administration Medical Center and Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Oregon Health & Science University, where he completed his residency and an MPH degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr Suhler completed his fellowship training at the National Institute of Health. He attended medical school at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

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Eric Suhler, MD, MPH, is Chief of Ophthalmology at the Portland Veterans Administration Medical Center and Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Oregon Health & Science University, where he completed his residency and an MPH degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr Suhler completed his fellowship training at the National Institute of Health. He attended medical school at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

Michael Lloyd, MD, is a glaucoma fellow at Devers Eye Institute in Portland, Oregon. In 2008, he completed his residency at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland Oregon. Dr Lloyd attended Medical school at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

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