Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-6-2024
Abstract
Background/Objectives: This study investigates whether there is an increased propensity to systemic conditions in patients with both age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and glaucoma in order to provide greater insight into patients’ overall health and response to physiologic stress. Methods: A large retrospective dataset review was conducted between April 2004 and June 2018, distinguishing four groups based on international classification of diseases (ICD) codes: glaucoma only, AMD only, glaucoma and AMD, and cataracts only (as an age-matched control). The systemic disease prevalence of each group was calculated, and a Friedman analysis was used to compare the prevalence between the groups. Results: This study identified 5243 patients with glaucoma only, 6726 with AMD only, 402 with combined disease, and 25,450 with cataracts only. Age and racial distributions varied between groups in a predictable manner. Two conditions, heart failure (HF) and dementia, had a statistically higher prevalence in patients with both glaucoma and AMD compared to those with glaucoma alone (HF p = 0.036, dementia p = 0.024) and cataracts alone (HF p = 0.003, dementia p = 0.036). There was no significant difference observed in terms of ethnicity and gender among the different disease groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Both AMD and glaucoma individually portend a higher rate of comorbidities than age-matched controls. Patients with concomitant AMD and glaucoma demonstrate a uniquely higher prevalence of heart failure and dementia than those with either disease alone. The underlying association and pathologic mechanisms warrant further investigation to improve the overall health management and prognostication for these individuals.
Recommended Citation
Dimalanta, L., Pithadia, K., Shenkute, N. T., Strelow, B., Zhang, Z., Ulrich, J., Zhang, A. Y., & Fleischman, D. (2024). Disease Associations among Patients Afflicted with Both Glaucoma and Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 13(19), 5941. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13195941
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Journal of Clinical Medicine
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13195941
Comments
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).