Demographic and clinical pattern of non-infectious uveitis in the Tripoli Children's Hospital

Abstract

Uveitis is relatively rare in the pediatric population, but it leads to considerable ocular morbidity. This study aims to describe the clinical, etiological, and treatment features of noninfectious uveitis in Libyan children in a pediatric rheumatology clinic. A retrospective analysis of medical records of pediatric patients who were diagnosed with noninfectious uveitis from January 2000 to December 2021 at the pediatric rheumatology clinic at Tripoli Children's Hospital, Tripoli, Libya, was conducted. All the cases of uveitis in patients under 18 years of age at diagnosis were included. The collected data included age at diagnosis, anatomical location of uveitis, laterality, associated systemic disease, used medications, and visual outcome. 75 patients (137 eyes) comprised the study sample. The mean age at the onset of uveitis was 8.9 ± 3.5 years. The female-to-male ratio was 1: 1.7. Pan uveitis was the most frequent anatomical location (54.7%), followed by anterior uveitis (36.0%), posterior (8.0%), and intermediate (1.3%). The bilateral eye was involved in 82.7%, and the unilateral eye was involved in 17.3%. The common causes of non-infectious uveitis are chronic idiopathic (52.0%), which was the most frequent etiology. Other causes associated with systemic diseases. The most frequent systemic disease was juvenile idiopathic arthritis (20.0%), frosted form-associated uveitis (10.7%), followed by Behcet disease (10.7%), HLA B27-associated uveitis (2.7%), and Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease (2.7%). Complications occurred in 78.8% of affected eyes. The most common complications were posterior synechia (41.3%), cataract (18.7%), glaucoma (21.3%), and cystoid macular edema (20.0%).